Why Workplace Restorative Practices?

The significance of conflict resolution in your workplace should never be underemphasized. Proper conflict management helps create innovative solutions to internal relationship disputes and hostile scenarios.

It helps check work environments that engender negativity, discrimination, stress, lack of enthusiasm, and wide-ranging employee unrest, that leads to decreased productivity, turnover, and in extreme cases, project failure.

Workplace conflict costs money. Companies in the US spend about 359 billion annually on workplace conflict. According to a study commissioned by CPP Inc. – publishers of the Myers-Briggs Assessment and the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument – 85% of US employees deal with conflict on some level.

While it’s common to have a conflict of some sort in the workplace due to differing personalities, management styles, and opinions, it becomes problematic when a disagreement or confrontation disrupts the flow of work, thereby causing drops in efficiency and output.

Also, statistics from the report issued by CPP, reveals that an average employee engages with conflict about 2.1 hours a week. For companies in the US, that translates to 385 million working days unproductively spent every year because of workplace conflict.

One in six (16%) say a recent dispute escalated in duration or intensity, only 11% of those surveyed have never experienced a disagreement that escalated. Various adverse outcomes arise from conflicts. 27% of employees have seen conflict lead to personal attacks, and 25% have seen it result in sickness or absence. Indeed, nearly one in ten (9%) even saw it lead to project failure.

Similarly, according to the report, the following statistics demonstrate how pervasive and unhealthy conflict is in the workplace:

34% of conflict
occurs among front-line employees

Although most employees in the study agreed that managing conflict is an important element of leadership, only a minor percentage had ever been trained to acquire the all-important skill of conflict prevention and management at the point of entry into the workforce.

According to the CPP report, seven out of ten employees (70%) regard conflict management as an essential and fundamental leadership skill. About 54% of employees expect that managers could handle disputes better by addressing underlying tensions before the conflict intensifies.

Taking all the negatives experiences related to workplace conflict into account, Workplace Restorative Practices, Inc. have developed training modules that will help you and your organization resolve the root causes of your problems.

So, what should companies do to deal with conflict?

As a given, conflict rarely resolves itself – in fact, it usually escalates if not dealt with proactively and properly. Consequently, companies are encouraged to be proactive and tackle conflict head-on. It is not unusual to witness what might have been a non-event deteriorate into a huge problem if not resolved early on.

To fundamentally deal with conflict, training is the most beneficial and productive approach. Where training does exist, it adds much value. The CPP Report shows that over 95% of people receiving training as part of leadership development or formal external courses say that it helped them in some way. A quarter (27%) say it made them more comfortable and confident in managing disputes, and 58% of those who have been trained say they now look for win-win outcomes from conflict.

At Workplace Restorative Practices, Inc., our primary purpose is to maximize productivity and efficiency for businesses.