Interpersonal relationships between staff and line managers are most prone to conflict

Why Mark Rose, Managing Director of Creativedge Training, thinks line managers need to be better prepared, or better trained, to handle mediation disputes

I always enjoy reports about ‘World’s Best Employers’ or ‘Top 100 Companies who do ‘X, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ for their staff’. They make for a fascinating read and can often serve as a tremendous inspiration for making changes to my own company and for my staff.

So with this in mind, when I eagerly read Fortune’ s list of World’s Best companies http://fortune.com/best-companies/  my attention was seized by the criteria by which companies were judged: % Women % Minorities # New Graduates Hired # of job openings. Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not questioning the value of these significant criteria, but when I subsequently read a great article in CITY AM this week on ‘Three myths on what makes the ideal workplace’,  I began to wonder whether any of the survey questions sent to companies for these ‘best company’ lists, asks them the less obvious question of how they manage conflict? Yes, conflict. Sound like I’ve thrown a curve ball? Let me explain.

Conflict in the workplace has long been an issue and it’s a big issue. The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) has recently produced the ‘Getting under the skin of workplace conflict report 2015’ and the report found that four in ten (38%) UK employees have apparently reported some form of interpersonal conflict at work in the last year. This was either as a one-off incident or as a result of an ongoing, challenging relationship.