Key Trends 2010/11

Conflict Strategy & Planning

Whilst organisations recognise that workplace conflict is rising, they are not able to accurately cost how much conflict is currently costing them. In addition:

• They do not have a conflict planning, prevention or resolution budget in place and yet are spending thousands (often hundreds of thousands, if not millions) on Compromise Agreements, absence issues, tribunals, grievances, training, HR and line manager resources
• HR departments spend a significant amount of time dealing with workplace conflict – directly and/or indirectly

Counting the Cost of Conflict and Organisational Culture

Whilst some organisations track direct conflict costs such as tribunal costs, grievances and stress-related absence, we see little evidence of linking conflict to organisational culture, management capability, engagement, turnover or productivity. In addition:

• Many organisations, particularly within the public sector have grievance/complaint cultures and many see the role of handling conflict and/or HR issues as HR’s responsibility
• Organisations don’t proactively link culture to how people handle conflict or understand how to put measures in place at a strategic and/or operational level to move from a high/medium conflict culture to a culture of collaboration
• HR departments/functions are predominantly reactive and measure value by volume of transaction rather than bottom line impact – acutely prevalent during an economic downturn

Management and Leadership Capability

Without exception, every organisation (irrespective of sector) has issues around ‘people management’ capability.  Organisations continue to recruit on an individual’s technical ability or the direct value they contribute to the business with little or no assessment of their people management skills.

Many managers, particularly at the supervisor/team leader level, have the highest volume of direct employees to manage and yet are not given the support or time within their roles to manage people.

Middle managers are often cited as the ones who continue in their ‘old ways’ causing the most conflict. It appears they are the most disengaged and often reluctant to adapt to the changing needs of an organisation.

Many HR departments reflect that their senior management team ‘don’t walk the talk.’ What they say and do in terms of behaviour and attitude is very different to what they expect of their people. This creates double standards, inconsistencies of behaviour and attitude, conflict of interest, internal politics, silo working and disengagement.

Conflict at senior levels tends to be dealt with differently to lower management levels (e.g. senior grades are more likely to be managed out of the business, whereas lower/medium levels are expected to go through lengthy formal grievance/disciplinary process).

Conflict Resolution

Many organisations have introduced mediation as part of their dispute resolution process with minimal or little success. Very few organisations have considered introducing mediation as an effective means to impact on how they tackle conflict and/or implemented the scheme to optimum effect.

For those that have embedded mediation successfully, there has been a noticeable difference in the way conflict is handled across the workplace and a significant reduction in the number of formal complaints.

With the continued shift to HR shared services and reduction in support services, many HR departments expect line managers to handle investigations but very few have provided appropriate training. The knock-on impact of this is leading to increased risk to the business and costs.

Organisations are experiencing a significant increase in the level of bullying and harassment incidents (data collated from staff surveys and/or through the number of formal complaints received), while there remains a worrying level of misunderstanding about what mediation is exactly and how/when it can be applied.