Conflict Resolution In The Workplace

Conflict in the workplace is sadly inevitable.  Put a group of people in a room together for eight hours or longer every day, week after week. No matter how well they get along, sooner or later, it’s going to happen.

Since it can’t be completely avoided, the next best thing is to have a plan for when it occurs. That’s because if left unaddressed, employee conflicts can ruin morale and permanently damage your company’s culture.  Simply put, letting conflicts in the workplace fester is a very bad idea. The question is what can be done about it?

You’re in luck!  Just below, we’ll outline a few simple things you can do to resolve workplace conflicts before they get out of hand and cause lasting damage to your company.

1 – Address It Head On

When you see two of your employees feuding, they will most likely be sniping at each other with barbs or insults and it may be either in person or via email. No matter what, it is important to address it right away.

Meet with all the participants of the conflict and find out what’s behind it.  There are only two possibilities here and it’s either personal or it’s professional.

2 – How You Address It Matters

In the case of personal differences driving the conflict, you can likely just meet with both parties at the same time.  Sit them down and remind them to keep the personal stuff out of the office.

If it’s professional, it may be best to meet with each side separately so you can get each party’s side of the story and assess from there. Then, involve HR at that point if necessary.

3 – Listen and Seek Input

After hearing from the parties involved about what’s driving the conflict, ask each of them how they’d like to see the issue resolved.

Sometimes, nothing comes from this when both parties may have unrealistic expectations. However, more often than you might think, a solution presents itself from that conversation.

There are several other things you can do to help resolve workplace conflicts, but if you do nothing more than adopt the suggestions above, you’ll be miles ahead of most managers!

Conduct More Effective Meetings With These Simple Tips

Do the meetings you hold tend run off the rails?

Do you find that they frequently run far longer than you intended and that very little actually comes out of them?

If those things are true and if you’re looking for ways to improve the structure of your meetings, here are some quick tips that will help make them more effective:

1 – Consider Your Attendees Carefully

Unless someone’s presence is essential at any given meeting, don’t send them an invite.  Keep the circle as small as possible.  The fewer people, the easier it is to keep the meeting on track.

2 – Laser-Like Focus

Create an agenda for the meeting and stick to it.  Don’t try to do too much.  Focus on one item or two at the most and then hammer out the details and move on.

3 – Prompt Follow-Up

The first two items on this list will practically guarantee that your meeting time is shorter but it won’t necessarily guarantee that the meeting itself was fruitful and productive.

For that, you need quick follow ups, and part of the content of the meeting should be to set aggressive timetables on when deliverables are due.

Once those timeframes are set, it’s on you to follow up and make sure that everybody’s on track and the deliverables will be wherever they need to be by the agreed upon time.

If you adopt these strategies, you may find that you’ll have relatively more meetings than you’re having right now.  The good news is that those meetings will tend to be short, tightly focused, and productive.  In other words, they’ll simply be more effective meetings and at the end of the day, that’s exactly what you want!

Try it and see for yourself.  If you put these tips in practice during your next meeting, you’ll be amazed at the difference.

You May Need To Replace Old Cisco VPN Routers

Do you own one or more of the following products made by Cisco?

  • The RV110W Wireless-N VPN Firewall
  • The RV130 VPN Router
  • The RV130W Wireless-N Multifunction VPN Router
  • The RV215W Wireless-N VPN Router

If so, be advised that a new and critical security vulnerability has been found that impacts your equipment.  It is being tracked as CVE-2022-20825.  With a severity rating of 9.8 out of a possible 10, it’s about as serious an issue as it’s possible to have.

What is worse is that because the equipment referenced above is older and at the end of its service life, Cisco announced that there will be no patches to address this recently discovered security vulnerability.

Per a recent Cisco security advisory, the flaw exists because of insufficient user input validation of incoming HTTP packets on impacted devices.

It should be noted that this flaw only impacts devices that have their web-based remote management interface enabled on WAN connections.  If you’re not doing that, then even if you have an older piece of Cisco equipment, you’ve got nothing to worry about.

If you’re not sure whether remote management is enabled or not, just use the following steps. Log into the web management interface and make your way to “Basic Settings” and then “Remote Management.”  From there, just verify whether the box is checked or not and you’re all set.

In cases like these, we do wish companies were willing to be a bit more flexible. However, on the other hand, it’s easy to see how an offer of more time would be abused. So while we feel your pain if you own one of the impacted devices and we also understand why Cisco is taking a hard line and not granting any wiggle room.

All that to say, if you’re still using one of the devices referenced above, upgrade to a newer piece of equipment as soon as possible.

It May Be Time To Update Your Business Logo

Corporate branding can be worth its weight in gold and certain images are absolutely iconic.  The Golden Arches, the Nike “swoosh,” and Apple’s Apple all come to mind.

Logo images give companies the means of offering a consistent brand image over time, and that  can be a very good thing.

Over time, tastes and styles change.  If your company presents itself as being on the bleeding edge of the technological curve, then your logo should almost certainly change with the times.  If you go back and look at Apple’s logo over the years, you’ll see that while it’s fundamentally the same, the company has made a few subtle modifications and adjustments over the years.

Changing your brand’s logo can be an expensive proposition so it’s not something you want to do at the drop of a hat. However, if you feel that it’s beginning to look a bit stale or dated, then there can be some real and tangible advantages to giving it an update. That is especially if you time the update with the release of a new product that offers tangible proof that your firm is headed off in some new and exciting direction.

The best brands tell a story and engage their customers.  Pictures are worth a thousand words, so branding images are  a big part of telling your brand’s story.  Ultimately then, the decision of if or whether to update your logo comes down to the following.

What kind of story do you want to tell your customers?  Do you want to offer them a tale of stability and rock-steady performance?  If so, then you’ll probably only want to update your logo rarely.  On the other hand, if you want to tell a story of momentum and velocity, the updating your logo more often would be a worthwhile endeavor.

How To Protect Your Company With Cybersecurity Awareness

These days, companies spend significant sums of money to protect themselves from cyber criminals.  The threat matrix is vast, and attacks can come from almost any quarter. That is why many companies not only spend heavily on antivirus software, but also on a wide range of tools that IT security professionals can leverage to intercept attacks “at the gates” and prevent attackers from ever breaching their defenses.

Further, many companies will engage with third-party specialists to provide round the clock monitoring.  Managers invest even more money to ensure that regular backups are taken. This is so that if the worst happens, the process of recovery will be relatively quick and the company can get back to the business of its business with as little downtime as possible.

All of that is commendable, but the unfortunate reality is that even the most elaborate and expensive systems designed to defend your corporate network can be reduced to nothing by one moment of carelessness by one of your firm’s employees.

If you want to increase the return on your IT Security investment, the very best thing you can do is educate your workforce to the dangers that are lurking on the ‘net.  Teach them security best practices so that they become part of your network security solution rather than being yet another risk factor you have to guard against.

A few examples of the way your employees may be unwittingly putting your firm at risk include the following:

  • They use simple, easy to guess passwords that any hacker could guess with minimal effort
  • They seldom change their passwords unless forced to
  • When traveling, many will connect to your company’s network using free, unsecured WiFi hotspots
  • A disturbing percentage of people use the same easily guessed passwords across multiple web properties
  • They fail to use multi-factor authentication paradigms, even when and where you make them available
  • Far too many people will automatically assume that any attachment that lands in their work email inbox is safe, and will open it without thinking twice
  • And there is very little cross-checking done when someone reaches out to them via corporate channels to ensure that the person contacting them is who they claim to be

All of these pose a very real risk to the security of your company.  Make sure your employees get the training they need to keep both themselves and your corporate network safe.