Conflict has been said to be part of the human condition. Small wonder then that it’s also part of the workplace condition. But just how common is it? How big are the costs? And what are organisations doing in response? This article explores selected available data to build a picture of conflict at work and its management.

Incidence & costs

Some of the best evidence on experiences of conflict at work comes from a recent CIPD YouGov poll in 2015 of 2000+ individuals. Some 38% reported experiencing an isolated dispute or incident of conflict and/or an ongoing difficult relationship with someone at work in the last year, the most serious often being with their line manager or another team member (CIPD, 2015). Strikingly, the most common issues concerned differences of personality or working styles (44%). That isn’t atypical, and neither is the fact that conflict is costly to individuals, usually in terms of stress (43%). Negative impacts on health, well-being and absence are well-understood, and almost all HR practitioners can recount anecdotes of long-term sickness absence – years rather than months – with conflict at their core. The impact is also rarely limited only to those directly involved and can damage the psychological contract.

Those individual costs are reflected in the challenges faced by organisations. As an example, we recently undertook a survey of managers at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHCT). While 36% of managers claimed conflict reduced motivation and consequently productivity, substantially the most frequently cited cost by 60% of managers was wasted management and staff time (Latreille and Saundry, 2015). We didn’t seek to quantify this, but wider evidence – albeit somewhat dated – suggests employees spend around 1.8 hours a week dealing with conflict; an annual ‘loss’ nationally of 370 million working days (OPP, 2008). Significant management time is absorbed dealing with conflict, while among HR practitioners a significant minority (43%) report doing so ‘continually’ or ‘frequently’ (CIPD, 2008).

However, while conflict is typically experienced negatively, it can sometimes lead to positive outcomes. For example, at NHCT more than a third of managers said it led both to better understanding of others and to improved working relationships, even if another 30% reported no positive benefits. The key is how conflict is managed and the organisational culture in which it occurs. A critical feature at NHCT had been the development of a conflict competent culture, with almost 60% of managers reporting the approach as being ‘collaborative’ (i.e. involving joint working/problem solving), with early, informal interventions being the norm.

Resolution & management

Despite its prevalence however, conflict remains something organisations still don’t seem to tackle well. For example, just 30% of the respondents to the CIPD YouGov poll referred to above felt their organisation had effective procedures for resolving interpersonal conflict. And fewer than half (46%) said they felt confident raising issues in their organisation, with the same percentage agreeing that mediation is an effective approach to help resolve workplace disputes.

And it’s mediation that has emerged over the past 10- 15 years as the most commonly adopted tool for dealing with conflict at work. Its use was given additional impetus by the recommendations from the Gibbons Review which highlighted the merits of early resolution and mediation specifically (Gibbons, 2007). Just four years later, the 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Survey found that among workplaces with five or more employees, mediation was included in 62% of grievance procedures and 61% of disciplinary and dismissal procedures (van Wanrooy at al., 2013). Yet it was reported as being used in just 7% of workplaces in the previous 12 months (or 17% of those experiencing employee grievances and 14% with disciplinary cases (Wood et al., 2014)). And that despite well-understood benefits confirmed across a range of studies. Those include high success rates (typically 85% or more), more expeditious resolution and lower cost compared with grievance processes, preservation of relationships, greater confidentiality and, arguably, the capacity to deliver culture change (BIS, 2011). Participants themselves typically express positive sentiments about the process and its fairness.

Perhaps part of the reason for the modest uptake (Latreille, 2011) is that individuals struggle to see how it might help in their own context. For example, just 13% of the CIPD YouGov respondents said they had a difficult relationship at work that would have been helped by mediation. And as some of our previous work has highlighted, mediation is often seen/used as a last resort and may encounter resistance from line managers who think it undermines their authority and/or perceived competence. Sustaining mediation can be difficult due to tensions with commercial/operational priorities, especially when there’s also often only limited internal evaluation. There have been laudable improvements in this regard in recent years, and in organisations’ attempts to measure the financial benefits, but it remains the case that mediation may be ‘fragile’ reputationally, and seen as being only as good as the outcome of the latest case (Latreille, 2010).

As we’ve argued elsewhere (Saundry et al., 2014), conflict remains something of a blind spot for most organisations. At best it’s seen as a transactional issue; a problem to be fixed. And it could be argued that mediation – despite being an excellent, effective and versatile tool – perpetuates this by virtue of its reactive nature and focus on resolution (at least in the form most commonly practiced in the UK). Effecting the culture change the UK government has talked of requires it to be part of a more strategic approach to conflict, linked to wellbeing and productivity agendas.

So what might a more strategic approach look like? There are some clues in the US, where many larger, ‘high road’ organisations have adopted Integrated Conflict Management Systems (ICMSs). These entail “… a comprehensive, systems approach to the prevention, management and resolution of conflict… changing the philosophy (and, in many cases the terminology) of organizational life” (Lynch, 2001: 207-8). Around a third of organisations in the Fortune 1000 survey conducted by Lipsky et al. had adopted features consistent with an ICMS (Lipsky et al., 2016). These include coverage of all employees and issues, multiple access points/referral opportunities, and use of a wider dispute resolution toolkit encompassing both rights- and interest-based options (e.g. conflict coaching, peer evaluation etc.). Further elements are support structures including corporate/executive commitment, appropriately aligned incentives and practices, and training, alongside a focus on developing a conflict competent culture.

Conclusions

While the widespread development of integrated approaches to conflict management may be a long-term aspiration in the UK, a more immediate and realistic focus could be placed on the role of front-line managers. Although they play a critical role in conflict resolution, our research suggests they lack confidence in dealing with such issues, and are often seen to be as much part of the problem as the solution. One of the many positive features at NHCT is that conflict management is embedded within their HR strategy. Managers are selected and promoted on the basis of strong technical and people skills, and also provided with training. 85% said this helped them do their jobs more effectively and be more confident in dealing with such issues. Providing line managers with key mediative skills may be the first step towards more strategic and effective conflict resolution in UK workplaces.

References

BIS (2011) Resolving Workplace Disputes: A Consultation, London: BIS (available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/31435/11-511-resolving-workplace-disputes-consultation.pdf)

CIPD (2008) Leadership and the Management of Conflict at Work, London: CIPD (available at: http://www2.cipd.co.uk/NR/rdonlyres/E426E492- 7AED-46A6-B8F5-92B9CF9725C5/0/4545Leadershipconflict.pdf)

CIPD (2015) Getting under the Skin of Workplace Conflict: Tracing the Experiences of Employees, London: CIPD (available at: https://www. cipd.co.uk/Images/getting-under-skin-workplace-conflict_2015-tracing-experiences-employees_tcm18-10800.pdf)

Gibbons, M. (2007) Better Dispute Resolution: A Review of Employment Dispute Resolution in Great Britain, London: DTI (available at: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090609022048/http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file38516.pdf)

Latreille, P. (2010) “Mediation at Work: Of Success, Failure and Fragility”, AcasResearch Papers, 06/10 (available at: http://m.acas.org.uk/media/pdf/1/4/Mediation_at_work_of_success-failure_and_fragility-accessible-version-may-2012.pdf)

Latreille, P. (2011) “Workplace Mediation: A Thematic Review of the Acas/CIPD Evidence”, Acas Research Papers, 13/11 (available at: http://www.acas.org.uk/media/pdf/l/7/1311_Thematic_review_of_workplace_mediation.pdf)

Latreille, P. and Saundry, R. (2015) “Towards a system of conflict management? An evaluation of the impact of workplace mediation at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust”, Acas Research Papers, 02/15 (available at: http://m.acas.org.uk/media/pdf/5/7/Conflict-management-Northumbria-Healthcare-NHS-Trust.pdf)

Lipsky, D.B., Avgar, A.C. and Lamare, J.R. (2016) “The Evolution of Conflict Management Policies in US Corporations: From Reactive to Strategic”, in Saundry, R., Latreille, P. and Ashman, I. (eds.) Reframing Resolution – Innovation and Change in the Management of Workplace Conflict, London: Palgrave Macmillan (available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303792520_The_Evolution_of_Conflict_Management_ Policies_in_US_Corporations_From_Reactive_to_Strategic)

OPP (2008) Fight, Flight or Face It – Celebrating the Effective Management of Conflict at Work, Oxford: OPP (available at: https://www.opp.com/download/item/10e61ce66e29407080ef0caf9f3dc846)

Lynch, J.F. (2001) “Beyond ADR: A Systems Approach to Conflict Management”, Negotiation Journal, 17(3), pp. 207-216.

Saundry, R., Latreille, P., Dickens, L., Irvine, C., Teague, P., Urwin, P. and Wibberley, G. (2015) “Reframing Resolution – Managing Conflict and Resolving Individual Employment Disputes in the Contemporary Workplace”, London: Acas (available at: http://www.acas.org.uk/media/ pdf/6/9/reframing_policy_paper_FINAL.pdf)

Van Wanrooy, B. Bewley, H., Bryson, A. Forth, J., Freeth, S., Stokes, L. and Wood, S. (2013) The 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Study- First Findings, London: BIS (available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/336651/bis-14-1008- WERS-first-findings-report-fourth-edition-july-2014.pdf)

Wood, S., Saundry, R. and Latreille, P. (2014) “Analysis of the Nature, Extent and Impact of Grievance and Disciplinary Procedures and Workplace Mediation using WERS2011”, Acas Research Papers, 10/14 (available at: http://www.acas.org.uk/media/pdf/2/d/1014-WERS2011- analysis-D-and-G-procedures-workplace-mediation.pdf)

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