Soft Skills, Hard Truths

As someone who has seen more stress claims than I can count, I’d like to share an insight I’ve gained over the years when it comes to mental-mental claims (the fancy term for stress claims that do not arise out of a physical injury). Most mental-mental claims fall into 5 categories:

·       Interpersonal conflict with a boss

·       Interpersonal conflict with a coworker

·       Interpersonal conflict with a customer/client (or anyone else the organization serves)

·       Traumatic event (e.g. witnessing violence, being held at gunpoint, etc)

·       Overwhelm related to workload

Since many of the scenarios arise out of interpersonal conflict, I’m going to focus on those.

The threshold for compensable stress claims in most workers’ comp jurisdictions is particularly high, so in most cases, we see claims denied on a legal basis.

The problem is that once the claim is denied, the employer assumes that the matter has been put to bed. A denied claim only means that the employee does not qualify for workers’ compensation benefits, but it does not mean that the conflict was not real or that the employee’s reaction isn’t reasonable.

Conflict usually arises when there are different communication styles, priorities or expectations…all of which are common in the workplace.

Most soft skills are rooted in effective communication, but no one is born with this skill set. It must be learned and practiced, just like any other skill set. Yet, we rarely see organizations train their workforce in soft skills. We just cross our fingers and hope that the employee learned these skills before they came to work for us.

Whenever I ask organizations if they are training their workforce on soft skills, like communication, people balk at the idea.

“I can’t send my entire workforce to training! I don’t have that kind of money!”

Okay, don’t be dramatic. I didn’t say you had to shut down operations and send everyone to Harvard to get their masters in Communications. Can you at least send a few managers for communications training? Can you start somewhere? Good lord, I would settle for a leadership roundtable were they meet quarterly to discuss some of the challenges they have communicating and connecting with their team. They can do that for free!

The point is, even if the stress claim is denied, you still need to do something. So, the next time you have a stress claim that is denied, your work as an employer isn’t done. That’s just the starting point for you to find out what caused the conflict and how to resolve it.