Daily Archives: May 5, 2011

The Importance of “Counting to Ten” in Employment Disputes

Count To Ten
Image by bartmaguire via Flickr

There are many, many different factual and legal issues that arise in employment disputes.

However, there are a few fundamental, core issues that underlie nearly all employment disputes and lawsuits.

The biggest cause of employment lawsuits I see is poor communication– most commonly, a worker letting anger or knee-jerk reactions control the way he or she communicates and acts.

The fix to prevent this is what a parent told you: Count to Ten.  Before you react out in an angry or knee-jerk fashion, take time to calm down, assess the situation, and take heart of the full gravity of the situation and the possible outcomes if various actions are taken.

If you are in a calm and factual state of mind, you will often deal with a situation much better than if you had acted out of emotion.

In almost every circumstance, when an issue arises at work (whether severe or minor), the people involved are able to work through the issue, with no one needing to lose their job or otherwise be harmed, if everyone keeps their cool.  Heck, if one side keeps their cool, that’s usually enough to make the other side calm down.

But once issues become personalized by either side, and communication suffers, then the matter is at high risk of leading to injury (e.g. lost job or wages or litigation-related expense) and festering until a much later resolution.  Those who count to ten almost always wind up in a better position.

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