What does your Conflict Orientation session involve?
The conflict orientation session gives employees an opportunity to diagnose how conflict operates in their workplace and imagine better ways to reoslve it. It's a 90-minute session and the content is generated by participants and facilitated by Canary Advisors. By the end, employees will have their own set of Conflict Baselines - the ways that they want to address conflict to ensure people feel connected, respected and positive.
Our employees are already engaged, happy, and feel comfortable talking about conflict. Do we really need this?
Sometimes even happy and engaged employees can experience interpersonal conflict and workplace stress. Employees will feel even more engaged if they know that there's someone independent from their employer who they can talk to when things don’t feel right or when they know that everyone has the goal of responding to conflict in a similar way.
What does Canary do that HR can't do?
That depends on what your HR already does! Sometimes there is just not enough time or bandwidth for HR to address interpersonal conflict and coach employees. That's where we come in. Even if that's something HR does do, HR can't have off-the-record conversations when it relates to harassment and discrimination. If they hear about something like that - they have to act. Canary gives employees an opportunity to have an off-the-record discussion before they decide what to do, and give them the chance to resolve these and other problems on their own.
Is Canary secure?
Definitely! Access to information by any third party is prevented by encrypting data in-transit (end-to-end) using secure TLS cryptographic protocols (TLS 1.2), and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with a 256-bit key to encrypt data at rest including the backups of the information. TLS is used to secure all data in transit. We could go on…
Does Canary investigate complaints?
Nope. Canary helps employees by giving them tools to resolve their concerns and conflicts informally, or giving them information about how to raise a formal complaint, including what an investigation will look like. The main goal of Canary is to give employees a sense of control over their problems and provide them with the information they need to resolve them in a way that feels right for them.
What kind of information do employers get from Canary?
Canary gives employers a record of the type of consult that comes to Canary Advisors and as much information about the employee's conflict as the employee is willing to provide. Employers always get helpful data on what types of conflicts are occurring and how they want their conflict resolved. All of this information is beautifully displayed and updated in real-time on employers’ Canary Dashboard.
Can employers contact employees who use Canary?
The goal of Canary is to encouarge employees to resolve conflicts on their own. But Canary Advisors will ask employees if they want an employer representative to talk to them about their conflict. If they do, Canary Advisors will assist employees with contacting their employer, either in a way that identifies them or anonymouly, as the employee wishes.
Can't employees submit false reports of conflict?
Employees can always submit false reports of workplace conflict to their employer. Whether it's by snail mail or an anonymous Twitter account. With Canary, employees have to speak to a human. Their Canary Advisor will need to ask them questions about their issues. It is harder for employees to submit false reports when they have to actually talk to someone who is trying to understand their problem.
Questions about Canary Advisors
What happens when an employee calls a Canary Advisor?
Canary Advisors will listen to the employee's conflict and gain an understanding of their goals for overcoming or addressing their conflict. The Canary Advisor will outline some options for the employee, including strategies for resolving their concerns informally based on what they learned in the Conflict Orientation session, and the opportunity to receive coaching, or instructions on how to raise a formal complaint based on their workplace's policy.
What kind of advice do Canary Advisors give employees?
Canary Advisors help employees understand and address conflict that they have in the workplace. Their advice is based on their expertise in workpalce conflict and the approach to conflict determined by employees in their Conflict Orientation session.
How is a Canary Advisors different from a counsellor from an Employee Assistance Program (EAP)?
Have you ever tried to call EAP to discuss workplace conflict? We have. We've learned that this is not an EAP counsellor's area of expertise. They are better at providing general counselling and referrals to other resources. EAP and Canary each have their own strengths. EAP counsellors also do not help employees relay concerns to their employers anonymously.
What qualifications do Canary Advisors have?
Canary Advisors come from a variety of backgrounds, but all have past experience and education in the areas of mediation, coaching, and workplace conflict management. They know what it means to be both empathetic and neutral. All Canary Advisors receive training to ensure that their approach is consistent.
What happens when an employee gets coaching from a Canary Advisor?
Canary Advisors always offer coaching in some form. Even if it's just helping an employee understand the options available to them for addressing their conflict. When an employee wants ongoing coaching, a Canary Advisor will gather information about the employee's goals for overcoming those concerns, and all the possible pathways to get there. The Canary Advisor then works with the employee to help them be accountable for their desired goals - and their chosen pathway to address them - by creating milestones for each follow-up coaching session.
How many coaching sessions can an employee receive from their Canary Advisor?
In order to make sure that employees all get a chance to use Canary, we limit the number of coaching sessions each employee can receive to 3 (in our experience this is usually sufficient).
Questions about Pricing
How many consults do you give for a typical company?
You as the employer are the best person to be able to answer this question based on your experience with your employees. How often do they bring up conflict? And how often are employees too afraid to speak up about it?
Does every call to Canary cost us?
No way! Calls that are made just for informational purposes - to ask about what Canary does and how it works - do not count as consults. It only counts as a consult when an employee needs to talk about a concern or conflict and engages in meaningful conversation with the Canary Advisor about it.
Do you give discounts for non-profits?
We certainly do. Contact us for more information about the discounts we offer.
Can you carry unused consults to the next year?
We do not allow carrying over unused consults from one year to the next.
