Organisational practices and culture often drive workplace conflicts. Ian Brinkley examines the impact of conflict and how it can be resolved and prevented in the future
The modern workplace is often a place of harmonious or at least tolerable relationships, but sometimes things go wrong. Ranging from one-off tiffs to more serious and systematic incidents, conflict can occur even in the best run workplace.
In early 2024, the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development (CIPD) conducted a large-scale workplace survey in the UK focused on the incidence, impact and resolution of conflict.
What is conflict?
According to the survey, conflict included feeling humiliated or undermined at work, being shouted at or in a heated argument, verbal abuse, unfair allegations, sexual and physical harassment, intimidation and assault and discrimination for a protected characteristic such as race, gender, disability or age. (The survey question did not mention religion.)
About 25 percent of the UK workforce reported at least one form of conflict in the preceding 12 months. The most common conflicts involved being humiliated or undermined at work, being shouted at, followed by verbal abuse and discrimination linked to a protected characteristic. The most serious incidents, such as sexual and physical assault were thankfully rare.
Most attention focuses on formal processes such as industrial tribunals, grievances and mediation as a means to resolve disputes. However, in practice, very few reported conflicts ever make it to this stage – just one percent ended up in employment tribunals, for example.
The most common reactions are informal. About half of those who reported conflict reported that they let it go. Involving managers and HR was the second most common way of resolving conflict.
Unresolved conflict
About two-thirds of conflicts are either fully or partially resolved. However, one-third are not resolved at all.
Unresolved conflicts may not be escalated because they are not serious enough, especially “one-offs”, or because people fear the repercussions if they do.
The survey does not tell us directly which is more likely, though evidence on the impact of the conflict suggests the former is more common.
Most people who reported conflict also said they had good working relations with managers and colleagues. However, they were more negative when it came to specific actions – for example, whether they were always treated fairly.
We think this apparent contradiction is down to people making a distinction between working relations in general and specific incidents.
Conflict also had relatively little impact on voluntary effort. Those who reported conflict were almost as likely to say they were willing to work harder than they needed to in order to help their organisation and just as likely to say they would help colleagues under pressure or make innovative suggestions.
However, we do find a clear negative association between conflict and a range of other indicators of the quality of work.
For example, those who report conflict are much more likely to say work had adversely affected their mental health and that they experienced excessive workloads and work pressures most or all of the time.
We cannot tell from the survey whether the conflict was the cause of these negative impacts or whether workplaces, where work quality was already poor, are more likely to suffer conflict. Both are likely to be true.
A decrease in workplace conflict
The survey asked about conflict in 2019 and since then there has been a significant decrease from 30 to 25 percent of the workforce. There are, however, two important caveats.
First, the improvement was largely confined to older white males in permanent, higher-skill white-collar jobs without disabilities. There was little or no improvement for the young; those in temporary or zero-hours jobs and short-hour contracts or those with disabilities, ethnic minorities and women.
Non-heterosexual workers also saw less conflict over this period, but it still remains at a high level.
In 2024, the latter groups reported significantly higher levels of conflict than the former, and since 2019 that gap has widened.
Second, the fall in conflict has also been greatest for those groups that saw the biggest rise in home-working. Those who work at home are less likely to report conflicts such as being shouted at or subject to verbal abuse.
Reducing workplace conflict
No strategy to improve the quality of work can fully succeed unless the incidence of conflict is reduced, especially among the “left behind” groups.
Improving the relative bargaining power of those who are more likely to report conflict may help. Legislative change focusing on formal dispute resolution may be justified but is unlikely to make much difference to the overall incidence of workplace conflict.
The biggest impact is going to be from organisational practice. Improving work quality in workplaces with below-average work quality is an obvious priority, but even well-run organisations can suffer conflict.
In both cases, mitigating some of the underlying causes of conflict, such as excessive workload combined with helping line managers manage conflict better in the future, will be required if progress is to be made over the next five years.
Ian Brinkley is a labour market economist
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