Workplace conflict remains a fact of organisational life and needs to be managed positively and proactively. Individual and ‘unorganised conflict’, in the form of sickness absence, bullying or harassment, and employee turnover, can be just as harmful and costly to an organisation as organised industrial action on a collective level. According to CIPD research on managing conflict in the workplace, conflict at work is a ‘common occurrence’ according to a quarter of employees, with one in five employers saying the same. Many staff have experienced some form of interpersonal conflict at work, either an isolated dispute or incident of conflict or an ongoing difficult relationship.
The CIPD’s Good Work Index shows the quality of people’s working lives in the UK continues to fall short on a number of key measures - poor wellbeing and stress, lack of development, high workloads and lack of work life balance being some of the issues at play. These factors will have a major bearing on the employee relations in workplaces and will increase the potential for conflict. The report highlights that existing inequalities in job quality have remained, while remote working and furlough have introduced new challenges and complexity. So, employers should work to ensure that good work and positive employee relations are a reality.
Employee relations therefore remains an important concept for organisations. For example: