This would resonate with Right Management's research amongst businesses in the UK, which showed that a majority of MD of SMEs believe they are spending too much time trying to resolve HR issues in the workplace and that this distracts from the central thrust of the business. To meet the problem we are seeing an increasing presence in business organisations of Mediation and Conflict Resolution programmes, and there is strong market for such services.
Imagine, though, we are running a health service. Into our hospital comes a growing number of people with broken legs, and the pressure on the A&E department is growing. We could go out to the marketplace and ask for better splints, improved crutches, enhanced bone-mending medication - this might help us keep pace with the demand. Or, we could stop and take stock and ask ourselves why so many people are turning up with broken legs. We could look at the circumstances that cause people to have accidents and develop a health promotion campaign that reduces the number of casualties.
We could provide active interventions at a societal level to change the way people look after themselves. We would soon understand that investment in prevention was far more cost-effective than simply stocking up on plaster of Paris, and we would also have helped to improve people's lives. Eventually, we would have a very quiet fracture clinic mopping up the few inevitable mishaps.
The trouble is that in the UK workplace we tend to respond to people issues when they have happened. This isn't just a function of the economic downturn; we have a long history of focusing our resources on problem-fixing yet in doing so we have created a rod for our own backs. We have conflict resolution - because we have conflict; we have bullying processes - because we have bullies; we have legislation - because we don't do the right thing by default. This is in spite of the fact that we know what causes interpersonal strain and conflict; there are decades of excellent and robust psychological research showing that a culture that allows undignified behaviour at the micro level suffers antagonism at the macro.
In order to deal with conflict we don't need conflict resolution, we need conflict elimination. We need to work at all levels of the organisation to promote a genuine sense of dignity that creates a work environment that, whatever the pressure, whatever the challenges, does not descend into interpersonal warfare. For too long, HR has been seen as the part of the business that deals with people, as if other parts don't need to; even its name supports the impression that this is the only business function that needs to be concerned with human relationships. This is despite repeated assertions from business leaders that "our people are our capital."
At a powerful presentation to the World Economic Forum at Davos, Manpower Inc recently demonstrated that we have now entered a new era at work, The Human Age. This isn't something we can choose to engage with - it's happening whether we are ready or not. Intelligent and successful business will, though, be quicker to adopt a healthier approach to the workforce and will ensure that everybody understands that people matter.
It is part of human nature that we tend to divide people into those we like and those we don't; the mistake that some people make is that they turn this into a battle for survival, with winners and losers. At the same time, business almost inevitably calls for decision making that will suit some people but not others. The potential for psychological conflict lies within us all, but so too does the ability to resist and to make more positive choices about how we act and react. The need for business is to engender a workplace culture that takes this into account but ensures that staff have sufficient emotional intelligence to work together effectively. We need managers who understand this and feel confident pursuing it, and we need a workforce that engages with it and sees that it brings real benefits to everyone.
We need to spend less time fixing broken legs.
Kevin Friery, clinical director at Right Corecare
