Gill Dix is head of Workplace Policy at Acas. She leads Acas’s strategic positioning on public policy, and the creation of advice on the Acas website.
Who owns the management of conflict at work? New Acas research seems to be pointing to a multiplicity of players. Employers, employees, unions, employee representatives, line managers and HR all have a role to play. This fits with the Acas mindset that everyone should have a stake in the important belgium phone number library workplace matters. But confusion-creep can also result first where there is no single strategic owner and, more importantly, when the different players are not entirely sure of the part they are to play.
Our research has been looking at the place
HR in the management of workplace conflict – earlier studies (Reframing Resolution Managing Conflict and Resolving Individual Employment Disputes in the Contemporary Workplace) (PDF, 217KB, 21 pages) have demonstrated that their role is crucial. We found changing and fluctuating roles for HR, often inside the same workplace. And with this came a frequent downgrading of the significance and seriousness of conflict at work.
The role of conflict in working life
In this sense our latest report, Managing workplace conflict – The changing alb directory role of HR (PDF, 457KB, 38 pages), tells us much of what we already know. Managing conflict at work is so often seen as an administrative and process function rather than a strategic one. And it can be very low on the list of HR priorities. But why? Although we investing in communication skills accept that differences of interest are a natural feature of playgrounds, partnerships and commercial agreements, we don’t seem able to accept them as a part of working life.
The emergence of the idea of a shared agenda between employers and employees around engagement has been seen as a positive one. But it may have inadvertently created the impression that all conflict is inherently negative and disruptive and overlooked the nub of working relationships. Worse still would be to deny the existence of conflict.
Collective disputes that manifest in strike action are on the decline, but other measures of discontent remain, including stress, absence, grievances, turnover and, following the abolition of fees, a resurgence in the number of employment tribunal claims.