Often the cost of poorly managed conflict is overlooked or not fully understood. There are a number of costs to our team and organization when conflict resolution is avoided, when it is managed poorly, and when leaders and team members aren’t trained on how to communicate in hard conversations.
Over the years, I’ve trained more than 78 municipalities on conflict resolution, de-escalation, and workplace violence prevention. As well, over the past almost 30 years of doing this work, my clients include all 3 levels of government, nonprofits, and industries across many sectors (from oil and gas to telecommunications and everything in between).
One of the things that isn’t going away is change. The other workplace dynamic that isn’t going away is conflict. As a result of being in relationships with others, whether that be at home or at work, we’re going to have conflict, we’re going to have disagreements, and we’re going to see things differently. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I’ve seen many teams and relationships grow from having a disagreement. It can be the case that a well-managed disagreement allows team members to understand each other better, build trust, gain different insights, be creative, and develop workable solutions.
The Costs of Poorly Managed Conflict
I remember reading an article, based on a TELUS Mental Health Index, about the loss of productive work days in organizations. The article and index stated that employers are losing 53 to 55 days of productivity because people are distracted by conflict, they are calling in sick, or they are not able to work effectively with others.
WOW!
That equals almost two months of lost work productivity. Then add on the stress of having to catch up on that time lost.
In this TELUS inventory, they interviewed about 3,000 people. According to the research, 21% of them had diagnosed anxiety and 14% had a diagnosis of depression. This report, along with many others, reminds us of the impact and toll of conflict on us emotionally and psychologically.
It’s important to note that when we are striving to create psychologically safe and healthy workplaces, we must consider the connection between conflict and mental health. It’s also important for us to remember that just because we have incredibly skilled and gifted employees in our organization, it doesn’t mean that they all come to us incredibly gifted and skilled in communication and conflict resolution. We hire people because of their technical skills, but it may not mean that they have exceptional conflict resolution skills.
Additional Impacts of Conflict on People at Work:
Some of the other costs of poorly managed conflict include:
- Absenteeism
- Cost for legal advice
- Fees for mediators, facilitators, or investigators
- Loss of good employees
- Damage to company reputation
In our upcoming blogs, we will continue to explore this important topic so you can avoid some of the unnecessary costs of poorly managed conflict and instead tap into the benefits of well-managed conflicts.