8.2 The Lesson: Problem-Solving Strategies
In Chapter 7, we studied the importance of generational and cultural dimensions and their influence on workplace conflict. In Chapter 8, we will focus on the role of a Human Resources professional in problem-solving.
While we have discussed several workplace conflicts in this textbook, it is equally important to focus on problems that employees and people leaders will bring forward. These individuals typically bring these problems to you as you are known as a talented brainstormer of solutions and a problem solver. Let’s look at the types of issues a Human Resources professional might be asked to help with that are not based on conflict.
Common Workplace Problems
Earlier in this textbook, we discussed the most common types of workplace conflicts that Human Resources professionals deal with. Equally, there are numerous conflict-free problems that people leaders and employees need help with. Let’s explore ten of the most common workplace problems.
Resources
Whether it be a request for additional staffing or more money for a project, people leaders often discuss the challenges they face in running their department.
Example: A manager states they cannot run a weekend shift because they don’t have enough volunteers. You assist by brainstorming ways to entice employees to sign up for weekend work, such as providing a catered lunch.
Communication
You may have employees who work in the office, on the road, or from home. Finding effective ways to communicate promptly with every employee can strain some organizations.
Example: A Manager states they are hosting a town hall meeting next month and want to ensure every employee can access it. You assist by brainstorming ways to include everyone, such as providing an online Zoom link for offsite employees and recording the meeting for those who may not attend that day.
Training
Organizations must deliver extensive ongoing training on new hire orientations, safety, company policies, and legislative compliance.
Example: A Manager states they struggle to keep up with training costs as they send all their staff to a third-party training centre. You assist by brainstorming ways to decrease training costs, such as having members of the supervisory team become certified in training so they can provide internal training sessions.
Performance Issues
It is common for people leaders to identify performance problems and seek your assistance with correcting poor behaviour.
Example: A manager states they have spoken with one of their employees on three occasions about meeting team deadlines. These conversations have been documented, but their performance has not improved. You assist by brainstorming ways to get this employee back on track, such as providing them with a written Performance Improvement Plan (PIP).
Flexible Work Schedules
Employees need as much flexibility as possible to care for themselves, their children, and their aging relatives while doing their jobs. Some need earlier or later start times, and some need four-day work weeks. Does your organization provide a flexible work schedule?
Example: An employee comes to you and shares that they are having a hard time getting their children to daycare before the start of the workday ever since their partner became permanently injured in a workplace accident. You assist by brainstorming ways to accommodate their request, such as starting their office job one hour later and staying one hour later at the end of their workday to make up the time.
Recognition
There are so many ways for organizations and people leaders to provide meaningful employee recognition. Some companies focus on celebrations when employees meet an important goal or timeline. Other organizations focus on providing employees with company shirts, jackets, and water bottles. The question remains: What is most meaningful to your team?
Example: A manager asks you for your assistance. They are making preparations for the annual meeting in six months and want to give everyone a gift to thank them for their hard work over the past 12 months. They are considering a catered meal, a trip to a baseball game, or organizing a summer picnic. You assist by brainstorming ways to gather input, such as sending out a short employee survey asking which of the three options the employees most prefer.
Work-Life Balance
The topic of workload and work-life balance is familiar in many organizations. Recently, Human Resources professionals have seen legislation that forces employers to write and communicate their work-life balance policy. This policy ensures employees aren’t connected to their jobs after hours or while on vacation.
Example: An employee comes to you and shares that every time they have a sick day or a vacation day, their manager sends them e-mails, text messages, and calls their cell phone to discuss so-called urgent matters at work. You assist by brainstorming ways to end this unwanted communication on their personal time, such as appointing another person from their department to take calls and answer communication in their absence.
Turnover
It is difficult to measure the cost of an employee’s departure. Your organization has invested time, money, and great effort in training new and existing employees in their roles. Some of your employees are so well trained that they are specialists or subject matter experts. Losing these individuals is a significant loss to your organization and morale.
Example: A manager in the Sales department asks for your help after losing three of their top salespeople to the competition in the past six months. You assist by brainstorming ways to determine why employees in the Sales department are quitting to work for your main competitor. These solutions might include anonymous surveys of the existing sales team and a review of your wages, commission structure, and company perks.
Engagement
How do you know when there is a lack of engagement among your employees? What kinds of things are people talking about, and what are they doing (or not doing)? Often, employees who lose interest in the company they work for stop participating in company events and seldom sign up to help with upcoming fundraisers or team sports.
Example: A manager comes to you for help. They have noticed that few employees attend the monthly staff meetings, opting to read the minutes after the meeting. In the past, everyone showed up for these meetings. You assist by brainstorming ideas to increase engagement and participation in the monthly staff meetings, such as asking departments to co-host and present highlights from their team on a rotating basis.
Growth Opportunities
When employees can’t visualize their career path in their organization, it can lead to boredom, lack of motivation, and possibly a job search for their next role. Does your organization provide employees with training, upskilling, and mentorship opportunities to ensure each employee is constantly growing their knowledge and skills?
Example: A manager is concerned their employees have become stagnant in their current roles. You assist by brainstorming ideas and suggest the manager implement a job shadowing and rotation schedule to allow employees to gain new skills and expand their knowledge of the process.
What is Problem Solving and Why is it Important?
The ability to solve problems is a basic life skill essential to our day-to-day lives at home, school, and work. We solve problems every day without really thinking about how we solve them. For example, it’s raining, and you must go to the store. What do you do? There are lots of possible solutions. Take your umbrella and walk. You can drive or take the bus if you don’t want to get wet. You might decide to call a friend for a ride, or you might choose to go to the store another day. There is no right way to solve this problem; different people will solve it differently.
Problem-solving is identifying a problem, developing possible solutions, and taking the appropriate action.
Why is problem-solving important? Good problem-solving skills empower you in your personal life and are critical in your professional life. In the current fast-changing global economy, employers often identify everyday problem-solving as crucial to the success of their organizations. For employees, problem-solving can be used to develop practical and creative solutions and to show independence and initiative to employers.
What Does Problem-Solving Look Like?
The ability to solve problems is a skill, and just like any other skill, the more you practice, the better you get. So, how exactly do you practice problem-solving? Learning about different problem-solving strategies and when to use them will give you a good start. Problem-solving is a process. Most strategies provide steps that help you identify the problem and choose the best solution. There are two basic types of strategy: algorithmic and heuristic.
Algorithmic strategies are traditional step-by-step guides to solving problems. They are great for solving math problems (in algebra: multiply and divide, then add or subtract) or for helping us remember the correct order of things (a mnemonic such as “Spring Forward, Fall Back” to remember which way the clock changes for daylight saving time, or “Righty Tighty, Lefty Loosey” to remember what direction to turn bolts and screws). Algorithms are best when there is a single path to the correct solution.
But what do you do when there is no single solution to your problem? Heuristic methods are general guides used to identify possible solutions. A popular one that is easy to remember is IDEAL (Bransford & Stein, 1993) :
- Identify the problem
- Define the context of the problem
- Explore possible strategies
- Act on the best solution
- Look back and learn
IDEAL is just one problem-solving strategy. Building a toolbox of problem-solving strategies will improve your problem-solving skills. With practice, you will be able to recognize and use multiple methods to solve complex problems.
Developing Problem-Solving Processes
Problem-solving is a process that uses steps to solve problems. But what does that mean? Let’s break it down and start building our toolbox of problem-solving strategies.
What is the first step in solving any problem? The first step is to recognize that there is a problem and identify the root cause of the problem. Similar problems can arise from different events, and the real issue may not always be apparent. Finding out what started it all is essential to solving the problem. This is called identifying the root cause.
Example: You and your classmates have worked long hours on a project in the school’s workshop. The next afternoon, you try to use your student ID card to access the workshop but discover that your magnetic strip has been demagnetized. Since the card was a couple of years old, you chalk it up to wear and tear and get a new ID card. Later that week, you learn several classmates had the same problem! After a little investigation, you discover that a strong magnet was stored underneath a workbench in the workshop. The magnet was the root cause of the demagnetized student ID cards.
The best way to identify the root cause of the problem is to ask questions and gather information. If you have a vague problem, investigating facts is more productive than guessing a solution. Ask yourself questions about the issue. What do you know about the situation? What do you not know? When was the last time it worked correctly? What has changed since then? Can you diagram the process into separate steps? Where in the process is the problem occurring? Be curious, ask questions, gather facts, and make logical deductions rather than assumptions.
When issues and problems arise, they must be addressed efficiently and timely. Communication is an essential tool because it can prevent problems from recurring, avoid injury to personnel, reduce rework and scrap, reduce cost, and save money. Although each path in this exercise ended with a description of a problem-solving tool for your toolbox, the first step is always to identify the problem and define the context in which it happened.
Several strategies can be used to identify the root cause of a problem. Root cause analysis (RCA) is a method of problem-solving that helps people answer why the problem occurred. RCA uses a specific set of steps, with associated tools like the “5 Why Analysis” or the “Cause and Effect Diagram,” to identify the origin of the problem so that you can:
- Determine what happened.
- Determine why it happened.
- Fix the problem so it won’t happen again.
Once the underlying cause is identified and the scope of the issue defined, the next step is to explore possible strategies to fix the problem.
If you are unsure how to fix the problem, it is okay to ask for help. Problem-solving is a process and a skill that is learned with practice. Remembering that everyone makes mistakes and no one knows everything is essential. Life is about learning. It is okay to ask for help when you don’t have the answer. When you collaborate to solve problems, you improve workplace communication and accelerate finding solutions as similar problems arise.
One helpful tool for generating possible solutions is brainstorming. Brainstorming is a technique designed to create many ideas for solving a problem. It was first popularized in 1953 by Alex Faickney Osborn in the book Applied Imagination. The goal is to develop as many ideas as possible in a fixed amount of time. Although brainstorming is best done in a group, it can also be done individually.
Communication of problems and issues (especially safety) is essential in any workplace. This is especially crucial in manufacturing, where people constantly work with heavy, costly, and sometimes dangerous equipment. When issues and problems arise, they must be addressed efficiently and timely. Effective communication is essential because it can prevent problems from recurring, avoid injury to personnel, reduce rework and scrap, and ultimately reduce cost and save money.
One strategy for improving communication is the huddle. Like football players on the field, a huddle is a short meeting with everyone standing in a circle. A daily team huddle is a great way to ensure that team members are aware of changes to the schedule, that any problems or safety issues are identified, and that team members are aware of how their work impacts one another. When done right, huddles create collaboration, communication, and accountability for results. Impromptu huddles can gather information on a specific issue and get each team member’s input.
Chapter 8 Exercise 1
You are the Human Resources professional at a medium-sized greenhouse facility. Carlos, the greenhouse Manager, has asked to meet with you to discuss a problem they have identified with the new employee orientation sessions. As the greenhouse is understaffed, Carlos has learned that new hires are being asked to start work in the greenhouse on day one instead of attending the two-day new employee training session. Carlos is worried about the safety of the new hires as they aren’t receiving the necessary training to work in the greenhouse. Can you help?“What is Problem Solving and Why is it Important?” and “What Does Problem Solving Look Like?” and “Developing Problem Solving Processes” from Introduction to Problem Solving Skills by CCMIT is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
