Workplace Conflict and Communication at Words Unlimited

Company Overview

Words Unlimited is an international company that provides copywriting, editing, proofreading, and translation services to clients across the globe. The company has experienced a recent spurt of growth in terms of both its customer base and its employee pool. Like customers, employees also operate from different locations around the world. The company started with only two management personnel and ten employees, all based in an office in Los Angeles, California at the time of its founding — and they remain there still.

Potential employees are allowed to submit their résumés online. These are scrutinized by the L.A. office staff and are accepted or rejected on the basis of two levels of assessment: the education level indicated on the résumé and a writing and reading test administered to short-listed candidates. The recent growth in customer numbers has necessitated more aggressive advertising for employment opportunities, and a large volume of applications has been received and processed.

Employees from remote locations have access to the company's website, where they are presented with an order database. Customers upload their orders via the website, and the employee taking the order then remains in constant contact with the customer to ensure that the work is progressing according to requirements and schedule.

With the larger employee base, conflict situations have arisen, with some workers appearing to resent the new employees. They feel that the new employees tend to be favored for certain orders and that they no longer have the volume of work opportunities they had before. Management, in turn, appears to feel that this is not the case, and that the growth of employee numbers was a necessary step in the company's evolution. Efforts to communicate about the issue have failed, simply resulting in greater levels of conflict. Indeed, the environment has become so hostile and blame-focused that many employees have simply resigned or stopped taking orders. This has resulted in escalating hostility between management and employees, with management threatening termination of employee accounts if no further orders are taken. The conflict has produced a loss of business for the company and an atmosphere of debilitating negativity.

For this reason, investigations have been conducted by means of interviews, surveys, and literature reviews. In general, it is found that effective communication is the key to resolving the company's conflicts.