Employee Relations and Conflict Resolution Questions

Covers diagnosing, investigating, and resolving workplace issues from routine interpersonal disagreements to complex investigatory matters. Candidates should demonstrate a systematic, evidence based approach including fact gathering and clarifying information needs, identifying immediate and root causes, reviewing relevant company policies and legal constraints, and evaluating the perspectives and business impact for all stakeholders. Core skills include active listening, impartiality, de escalation and mediation techniques, separating people from problems, conducting fair interviews, preserving and evaluating evidence, assessing credibility and intent, protecting confidentiality, and documenting decisions and outcomes. Candidates must be able to design and execute investigations, involve appropriate stakeholders such as managers, human resources partners, and legal counsel when required, set expectations and conduct difficult performance or corrective action conversations, recommend proportionate remedies from coaching and mediation through progressive discipline to separation when justified, and avoid treating termination as the default outcome. Additional competencies include weighing trade offs between employee advocacy, organizational fairness, and legal compliance; defining escalation criteria; planning communication and follow up to measure effectiveness; proposing prevention strategies through training, coaching, policy clarification, and systemic fixes; and adapting the level of rigor and intervention to the seniority of the role and the complexity of the case.