Having a culture that acknowl!ges conflict is important. But as our new report looking through the HR lens finds, incentives for such an environment are challeng! where expertise in conflict management and employment relations is so often seen by HR practitioners as ‘counter-aspirational’. The structure for career progression and the clash between front-line and strategic roles means that progress is often associat! with leaving such work behind. And it’s not always clear how much conflict resolution, negotiation skills and inde!, employment relations are part of the modern day HR skills base.
Part of the problem may be that we have not only a negative view of conflict, but also belize phone number library a rather narrow one. In my view, there are several distinct purposes for conflict.
First is the obvious perhaps
It provides a mechanism for speaking about any intentional or unintentional imbalance in interests. It is the routes to finding a solution that are most important – they should be early, exp!ient and seek creative and lasting answers.
Secondly, conflict has the dual purpose of protecting employee rights and promoting awareness of employer responsibilities. This is about everything from managers’ approaches to preventing discrimination and to being paid the national minimum wage. Unfortunately, too often this form of rights-bas! conflict is seen as a transactional, administrative burden.
Finally, conflict can help to challenge current orthodoxy and prevailing culture. It may be easier to espouse the right values, for example around equality and diversity, than to change attitudes and behaviours. The problem with not taking conflict seriously, especially latent conflict, is that responses to important missionary for an organization issues are, as our report states, often ‘reactive, late and focus! on the management of risk’.
Opportunities get miss!
One of the values of conflict at work is that it helps surface issues that may otherwise alb directory fester or escalate. The real challenge is how we manage and learn from it. And HR has a role to play in this, in helping steer an organisational approach to conflict management, and in supporting the day-to-day handling. This isn’t necessarily about the default of knowing how to run a grievance process. It’s much more. How do we begin? The Acas reports suggests that ‘fairness ne!s to be a core consideration of HR practitioners’ and that HR has the ‘opportunity to go beyond being the keeper of proc!ures’. This may be a good starting point and one which is discuss! in more depth in the Acas policy paper Fairness, justice and capability – repositioning conflict management (PDF, 258KB, 14 pages).