Workplace conflict is increasing. Every year, businesses lose money, productivity and people because they aren’t managing disagreements, reconciling opposing perspectives or avoiding complete relationship breakdowns. According to the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS), these issues are costing UK businesses an estimated £28.5 billion per year. So how can you reduce the cost of conflict in your organisation?
The short answer is tackle it, quickly! Here, you’ll find five reasons to act now, rather than leaving those disagreements bubbling for another few weeks or months:
Conflict isn’t inherently bad. Some conflict is positive and helps businesses to innovate, grow, and develop their people. Managed well, it brings different perspectives to the table and allows open discussion of ideas and effective challenging of decisions. That isn’t what we’re talking about here.
It’s the unresolved conflict. The situations which start small and slowly build resentment and frustration:
The ACAS figure of £28.5 billion a year is a big statistic, but what does that really mean for your business? Where are your costs?
All these issues come as a result of workplace conflict, especially at a senior level. The impact of poor working relationships filters down through teams and productivity falls away. The sooner you address conflict, the better for everyone.
You’ll find lots of articles about workplace issues which focus just on the employees. Yet the impacts go so much wider. When you have executives or directors who aren’t “playing nice”, it isn’t just them and their teams who suffer the effects.
Minor disagreements seep out in client meetings. Senior stakeholders start to see the cracks in cohesion. Leaders become viewed as unprofessional, or as presenting an opportunity for negotiation. Later, the involved parties take their conflict home. They moan about the situation to their spouse who wonders why no-one else can see what’s happening and why they aren’t stepping in. That creates tensions at home, driving even more negativity.
In the worst cases, decision-making stalls as people argue over political power or “principles” and they fail to reach agreement on business-critical issues.
Your business relies on those decisions being made.
Addressing workplace conflict isn’t just about supporting the few people directly involved in the situation. It’s about stopping it becoming a much broader concern.
It seems glib to say conflict affects culture, but it truly does.
Senior leaders set the tone for the business, in their communication, setting goals, being role models. When they start squabbling and sniping at others in meetings, the rest of the room sees it. They start to think that behaviour is acceptable and copy it with their own teams and peers.
Having unresolved conflict in your business drives the culture to change negatively. People see problems, not solutions and they look for someone to blame. Teams that once pulled together effectively start to fracture because they lack clarity from the top. No-one is quite sure which direction they’re going and it can change depending on the mood of the senior person.
All of that trickles down and becomes the new culture. People stop sharing, they don’t communicate, and they keep back details as a form of power. Your once collaborative business becomes divisive and unpleasant, and before you know it your best people are heading out the door.
No-one wants to stay where they aren’t recognised or supported, and that’s what long-term conflict can start to create. A space that doesn’t feel safe and where ideas are no longer welcome. Six months’ later, your best people have gone and given their commitment to someone else.
Flip that the other way though, and the whole story changes. When you tackle conflict, employees respect you for it. They know it’s hard to do and they appreciate you taking the steps. When you address the heart of the issue, they see leaders working effectively again and commit to raising their voices knowing it’s ok to be heard.
Most of these conflict situations can easily be resolved. You just need the right people having the right conversation to get things back and working. We’re talking about mediation.
Now, to be clear, mediation is not what you see on the television where one person gets blindsided by someone else. It is a safe space which starts with separate conversations to understand what’s really going on.
It often isn’t what you think, but having an impartial mediator to ask questions and get to the root cause is the essential first step. Once you know what the issues are, then you can get people together. And the changes might only take days to start showing.
So you avoid:
Instead, you can get people talking again quickly, without slowing the business down.
The final reason to consider taking action is the reputational risk you face. When people are unhappy at work, they tell other people. They do and say things that ordinarily they wouldn’t do, because the emotions take over. So not only does performance drop, but clients see conversations they shouldn’t, partners share how badly their husband or wife is being treated. In the age of social media and anonymous posting, people start sharing their real thoughts for everyone to see.
These are things which take years to undo. Your reputation gets damaged the longer you leave conflict unresolved.
Unresolved conflict is one of the quietest and most expensive problems in any organisation. When you address the tension early, you avoid the impacts on morale, performance and decisions. Yet, when the situation feels delicate, it can be hard to know what to do.
This difficulty isn’t a lack of awareness. It’s the point at which conflict becomes messy enough for confidence to drop and avoidance to creep in. And that hesitation has a cost.
At Hamilton Nash, we keep one eye on the resolution, always. And when it comes to conflict, the simplest truth is this: the longer it’s left, the harder—and more expensive—it becomes to deal with.
Take a look at your organisation. Where are the sources of conflict right now and what are you doing to address them? Once you’ve found them, give us a call for some straightforward advice and start resolving that conflict today.
