Conflict is on the rise - but is HR rising to the challenge?

In a career spanning more than 25 years – one which has seen her rise to be a former Group Director of Organisational Capability, an ex HR Director at Unilever and a VP of HR at GSK – Rochelle Trow, author of upcoming book ‘Anchored’, says she has seen more than her fair share of ‘conflict’ in the workplace.

But in the last few years, Trow says she’s convinced that rather than it reducing, this oppressive workplace pollution has only gotten worse. New figures released by conciliation service ACAS prove this – with 44% of employees saying they have either witnessed it or were on the receiving end of conflict last year – up compared to 2024. Her problem, however, is that it was observing HR’s broader failure to “do bigger picture thinking” and deal with it that was one of the reasons she decided to turn to writing instead.

“Rising worldwide instability – compounded by near-constant ‘change’ – these are the destabilising forces pushing everyone to want to ‘protect’ themselves,” she says. “And given this, it’s only natural everyone is more easily triggered by their immediate environment and for conflict rise.” And yet, she opines, it’s the very processes that exist in HR – those that push performance, and drive people to compete to be elite that not only create conflict in the first place, but then make HR professionals ill-equipped to then deal with it. “I burned out as an HR person,” she says. “I had to leave.”

HR’s duty to do something about it

The notion that conflict now seems to be properly baked into people’s working lives, is borne out by the detail of the ACAS data, which reveals conflict costs UK plc £28.5 billion per year. Some 34% of it comes from colleagues while 32% comes from line managers.

But as part-causers of the conditions for conflict, many commentators believe HR ought to have more processes in place to deal with it.

“Conflict at work is not novel, but thanks to tensions around performance expectations, pay, and working arrangements, it is becoming increasingly complex and increasingly visible,” says Lisa Hallewell, former HR BP at Sage, now director of human capability consultancy, Hoomph. But according to Alexandra Efthymiades, co-founder at mediation and conflict manager company, Consensio: “What’s missing is the guidance HR needs to provide managers, to then equip employees to be able to talk about disagreement and diffuse it in a way that builds relationships rather than destroys them.”

The irony, Efthymiades and others observe, is that cases of conflict have likely risen precisely because employees are much more likely to ‘go formal’ and lodge a complaint with HR, but this is the point where HR’s involvement just worsens things.

“A grievance process inherently follows a process that strips out the ‘human’ aspect, and looks to find a ‘wrong doer’,” says Efthymiades. “It then becomes all about revenge rather than trying to understand group dynamics.” The best policy, she and others argue, is to try and engineer-out the inevitable formality of conflict resolution processes, and try and create environments where honest conversations can happen.”

According to Phil Floyd, head of investigation at workplace relationship specialist, CMP, the trend of more conflict ‘going formal’ is one he certainly recognises. He says: “We have experienced a significant increase in requests for independent investigations over the last year or so, as well as for mediation and neutral assessment services.” But often, he says conflict arises unnecessarily and can quickly escalate because pre-formal conversations don’t happen: He says: “If an employee has had a personal disagreement with their manager and that manager subsequently initiates some form of Performance Improvement Plan, it’s natural for the employee to perceive that this was the result of their disagreement. What was ‘conflict’ in terms of a personal disagreement, may now have turned into conflict surrounding capability and performance with a clear risk of escalation.”

The need to go informal

According to Samantha Bonser, who until last year was Director of HR for the Federation of Small Businesses, HR must return to dealing with conflict informally – before it becomes something that is officially logged and becomes something much bigger than it arguably is.

“Twenty years ago, people would speak to each other directly, and move on,” she says. “Hybrid working has made it harder for people to develop relationships where they probably could just sort things out between them. So what HR professionals need to do, is create conditions for a return to this.”

She adds: “The problem with being very formal about things, and taking a ‘zero tolerance’ to conflict, is that everything becomes conflict, and conflated with all the really bad stuff, when most conflict is just a difference on opinion.” As Naomi Regan, author of soon-to-be-published book ‘Beyond Small Talk’ observes: “Connection is the foundation for everything at work, Without it, things can escalate fast. It’s only when people feel they can ‘wade in, that they have buy-in’.” In other words, HR has to facilitate the right environment where disagreements can be aired constructively.”