GETTING INVOLVED IN WORKPLACE CONFLICTS

Conflicts in the workplace are inevitable, but should managers get involved in inter-personal disagreements among employees?

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is an organization of human resource professionals from more than 120 countries. Its 2024 report of over 5,000 workers in the U.K. revealed several significant insights:

• Top management tends to think of conflict management in terms of formal resolution procedures, which they believe to be effective.

• In reality, very few employees actually escalate conflicts to any formal resolution procedure.

• In fact, the most common response to conflict by almost half of respondents was simply to “let it go” unresolved.

•. Those who “let conflicts go” unresolved reported feeling much less satisfied with their job plus negative impacts on their mental and physical health.

•. Approximately 10% said they were looking for another job because of conflicts in the workplace.

There is no reason to believe the results would be significantly different in the U.S. and Canada.

A landmark study of workers commissioned some 16 years earlier by CPP, Inc., in the United States, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, asked what managers could do to resolve conflicts. Fewer than 10 felt managers should do nothing. More than 40% agreed managers should “have more informal one-to-one conversations with people they manage” and “act as mediators when conflict develops.”