Jessica O'ConnorA widespread fear of confrontation is driving a culture of conflict avoidance in UK businesses, leaving HR at risk of dealing with a rising number of formal grievances, research has revealed.
A survey by HR and employment law specialists, WorkNest, found that 43% of employers and HR professionals said fear of confrontation or escalation is the single biggest barrier to resolving disputes early.
The data suggested that employees, including managers, were reluctant to address interpersonal issues.
Alex Holmes, employment law adviser and solicitor at WorkNest, said: “There is a growing tendency to not have difficult conversations due to a fear that it is confrontational or will cause an issue to exacerbate.
“However if handled correctly, it can actually de-escalate a situation and ensure a minor conflict doesn’t become more serious.
“The knock-on effects of not efficiently dealing with minor conflicts are severe. It will impact employee wellbeing, productivity and retention as well increasing absences and potentially putting businesses at legal risk due to formal grievances.”
The top barriers to effective conflict management according to employers and HR professionals included fear of confrontation or escalation (43%), lack of training or conflict skills (24%), resistance to change (20%), limited organisational support (8%) and unclear policies (5%).
The findings, from over 700 employers and HR professionals, revealed that conflict is often low-level and personal but response to issues can be slow or too procedural.
The most common sources of conflict were reported as; personality clashes (38%), performance-related disputes (26%) and line manager and employee conflict (22%).
Far fewer respondents said formal allegations such as bullying or discrimination were commonplace (10%).
Instead its day-to-day tensions that may be overlooked affecting morale the most.
Fear to tackle interpersonal issues or provoke emotional conversations is a cultural issue and a shift must therefore be driven from the top. However the data showed that often this isn’t the case as almost one in five (18%) HR professionals said feel “very unsupported” by senior leaders in managing conflict.
Wendy Lockhart, HR Consultant, said: “HR must tackle conflict avoidance norms and encourage effective resolution of these low-level, personal conflicts.
“This can be done through upskilling line managers beyond policy, driving a resolution mindset with employees, normalising preventative and informal dialogue and ensuring that senior leadership understand their role in modelling the correct behaviour to enable real cultural change.”
