Topic 3 – How to Manage Disputes

Sometimes, disputes are unavoidable. You might disagree with a client’s decision or you may find that your last paycheck somehow came up short. Fortunately, there is a procedure for settling such disputes and you won’t have to go through it alone:

Call or email your account manager.

In doing so, do outline the facts of what happened. If you can provide proof like screenshots or emails, you would do well to include them.

Your account manager would serve as your de facto mediator, so you may also tell them what sort of resolution you are seeking. Do you want an adjustment on the next pay run? Less stringent restrictions? Be specific yet reasonable.

Do note that your email or call will be filed away for reference, so stick to a professional tone.

Wait for feedback.

Your account manager will take note of your complaint and should get back to you within two (2) business days.

Once they offer you a resolution, you can either accept it outright or ask them to reconsider. In the former’s case, they will put things in writing to finalize matters and coordinate with your client to carry out the resolution.

Otherwise, you can go with the next step.

Escalate to the Account Manager Head.

If you are not happy with your account manager’s proposed resolution, you can tell them to refer the matter to their head. The latter will then review the matter and give you a reply within five (5) working days.

Again, if you are satisfied with the offered solution, it will be put into writing and carried out. Otherwise, there is the next step.

Escalate to the Managing Director.

As with the Account Manager Head, the Managing Director will review the matter and get in touch with you within five (5) working days. He or she will then work closely with both parties to resolve the matter satisfactorily.

How to Manage Self-Performance and Client Feedback

A self-performance evaluation is an essential tool to give remote workers a chance to review their past experiences and to discuss expectations moving forward. However, some find the evaluation intimidating. According to Billard (2017), self-assessments are the gateways of the employers to learn self-critiques that workers refuse to tell during a face-to-face evaluation. Furthermore, this will be the basis of the manager to identify what motivates their remote workers for office adjustments or giving incentives.

Creating your Self-Performance Sheet

Before we discuss further self-performance, let us learn how to write a self-performance sheet. Some sections of the assessment may vary depending on your occupation. Hernan (2017) highlighted items that should be taken into account in a traditional workplace which can be adapted in a remote setting. Here are general guide questions for your self-performance sheet. Remember to answer the questions honestly and critically.

• Calendar and Meetings
  • Are you often present and involved during online conference meetings? How did your team receive your opinions and contributions?
  • How do you think your opinions or suggestions being applied in project planning?
  • Do you always meet the deadline assigned to you? Why? Why not? How often do you complete your tasks on time?
  • How responsive are you when being called/chatted/emailed by your colleagues?

• Professional activity
  • How do you respond and receive instructions? How often do you ask for clarification?
  • How did your colleagues respond to your work?
  • How well did you react to criticism and feedback?
  • Are your professional process being applied in your current job? If not, what are the reasons that funnel your processes? How did you address it?
  • Were you able to identify new strengths or weaknesses at work? What are they?
  • How often your manager asks for revisions of your work?
  • How do you respond to delegated tasks?
  • What are your common roadblocks? How did this event happen? How did you address it?
  • Do you receive tasks outside your assigned role? Or have you picked up any new responsibilities?
  • How often do you address your concerns to your manager or office? Are they responsive to your concern?
  • Do you take tasks or support other remote workers in their tasks?

• Growth
  • What new skill(s) did you acquire?
  • What opportunities did your company provide to you?
  • Did you receive any incentives for your satisfactory work? Otherwise, did you receive comments from unsuccessful deliverables?
  • Did you improve a skill set you already have?
  • How were you able to self-troubleshoot your work issues?
  • Did you acquire training to improve your career? (client or self-funded)
  • How do you see yourself in the office? How can the office provide you career growth?
  • Were you assigned to manage a team? If yes, how did you perform as a leader? How did you respond or follow you?
  • What recommendations can you streamline to improve your current company? (management, innovation, organization, or process)

• Goals
  • What would you like to improve next time based on your current performance? What are your plans for this?
  • What do you want to achieve in your current position? (Career, skills, or promotion)
  • Are you prepared for any changes in your status based on your current performance? How are you going to keep/improve your evaluation?

The questionnaire is reflexive to identify relevant transitions or decision-making in your career. Normally, this self-review is done monthly to accurately capture the data of your performance indicators. Embracing changes and criticism may be challenging, but doing self-performance assessments are powerful for good in our careers.

See useful templates here.

Why is it important to have self-performance?

The goal of self-performance is straightforward. It allows you to measure your career growth in setting your SMART goals (Adams, 2019). In a remote work setting, you work with almost zero supervision, so it is your responsibility on how to review your performance.

Your HR department will rely on most of your task records, feedback from your manager, and your self-performance sheet. They may also provide you a template to follow.

1. Employee Training – If you excel in your remote work, the company can provide you additional training to up-skill your credentials.
2. Management Adjustment – The feedback from your self-performance review can also affect the processes in the office. Moreover, if HR identifies a feedback pattern from all employees this can be addressed to protect remote workers.
3. Integrity at work – By providing honest feedback based on your performance and response at work or the office management, this makes you a valuable contributor since remote workers experience the process first-hand
4. Potential Promotion – For remote workers that outstandingly perform at work, clients can provide promotion and salary improvement to reward a job well done. In hindsight, this keeps the loyalty and healthy relationship between the client and the remote workers.

To summarize, keeping a self-performance sheet will benefit your career. It will also save you time to answer HR-related concerns during evaluation. Remember that this is one of your few avenues to raise your opinions so take advantage of this opportunity.

Handling Client Feedback

It will make your day when you receive praise from all your hard work. Besides, this is an opportunity to note the things you did right for future reference, and to give yourself proper credit. However, in any workplace, negative feedback and constructive criticism are unavoidable. Here are some ways to take criticism and feedback into positive engagement.

1. Keep calm and listen carefully – When receiving feedback, avoid interrupting, and listen carefully. Distinguish the quality of feedback and separate how it was presented. A few people are trained to present criticism to be more edible to recipients and learning from it.3
2. Detach your emotional self – Do not take constructive criticism personally and do not get defensive. Taking remarks professionally is challenging, but distancing our emotional self will allow you to accept feedback openly.
3. Keep an open-mind – Ubiquitously, you need to have an open-mind because you may miss important pointers or information hidden in poorly delivered feedback. Proving your criticizer wrong will result in an unintended disconnect in working relationships. Accepting your mistakes first and then explaining your side maturely makes you more respectable and professional.
4. Ask questions and clarifications – In communication, to eliminate misinformation you need to clarify the core message of the feedback. Also, you have the right to ask questions and request for the right answers. If you were asked, you should respond concisely. Generally, the question exchange will allow the remote worker and the client to further diagnose the feedback.
5. Look at it in the perspective of your client – By putting yourself in the same situation as your client or HR, it will help you understand how your work has impacted a problem. You need to understand that it is also difficult for clients to lay their frustrations with you.
6. Reflection time – After receiving feedback, take time to absorb the criticism and determine its fairness and pointers. Before you respond plan what to say and perceive its impact on your criticizer. You may want to be private by responding to feedback via email, telephone, or video call. Never respond or comment on social media since other people will be aware of personal arguments.
7. Apologize – Apologize but do not over-apologize. You need to remember that genuine feedback is for your personal growth. Apologizing sincerely and maturely is the key to a healthy working relationship.
8. Resolving the issue – Take note of your mistakes to prevent it from reoccurring. You should also advise and educate your client if the issue is about your miscommunication. Remember to find a solution that will satisfy the demand of your client in conjunction with your capacity and resources.

One of the few techniques to resolve issues is using probing questions (the 5 Whys technique) to identify the main cause of the problem.

Scenario:

Addy was hired as a cloud financial controller assistant of an online logistics company for almost a month. One day his supervisor called him and confronted him about a purchase.

Issue: Your supervisor is questioning you about the unfamiliar charges in the company debit card.

1. Why? The debit card company did not notify the company beforehand.
2. Why? There may be automatic charges in the debit card.
3. Why? It was subscribed before Addy was hired.
4. Why? The office failed to unsubscribe the software.
5. Why? Addy forgot to review the expenses list of the company.

Counter-measure: Addy needs to check all the company expenses and subscriptions and inform the supervisors and managers about the company’s monthly expenses and recurring charges.