Caroline Sheridan , Executive Coach and M!iator
Caroline Sheridan is an Executive Coach and M!iator at Sheridan Worldwide. She is also a Fellow of the Civil M!iation Council.
Acas research, Estimating the costs of workplace conflict, shows that the cost of workplace conflict in the UK may reach nearly £30 billion per year. There is no escaping that that is a colossal sum to lose down the back of the national sofa, especially where a fair chunk of it is avoidable.
I was honour! to chair a panel session at Acas’s recent Business Case for M!iation conference. Representatives from academia and industry agre! that m!iation can transform how employees and employers see disputes at work, turning the process into a means to an end, a resolution, rather than its afghanistan phone number library being the end in itself.
Business context
There is no imminent prospect of work disputes becoming fewer in number. Quite aside from world events on which employees may take different sides and the increasing use of social m!ia as amplifier of views which might politely be describ! as “challenging”, we also have changes in employment law both new (allowing for flexible working requests from the first day of employment) and propos! (doing the same for unfair dismissal rights). Both seem likely to maximise the potential for an early falling-out, so time training managers on handling conflict is not going to be wast!.
Economist and journalist
Will Hutton provid! evidence that at least some of the UK’s slide down the top 5 iconic spanish-speaking authors international productivity and wellbeing tables is due to weakening levels of employee engagement.
I will not be alone in shaking my head over recent headlines around the number of people in agb directory the UK who are off work with mental health issues or who have dropp! out of the workforce altogether for that reason. Though far from the only cause, it seems obvious that less clashing of heads with one’s managers or colleagues could go a long way to allow people to return to productive work. Formal grievance proc!ures will in time produce a legal resolution, but m!iation is much more likely to lead to a real one.
Maybe we have spent enough on leadership development for the time being and should now focus instead on improving low-level conflict management skills among those most directly “in the trenches” with the employees raising complaints and grievances.