Lessons in safety

NUMEROUS FACTORS contribute to stress, encompassing both workplace-related and external influences. Employers are responsible for addressing those stressors that fall within their control within the workplace. In the context of stress risk management, the Health and Safety Regulator in Great Britain has outlined six primary workplace stressors: Demands, Control, Support, Role, Change and Relationships. 

In this article, we will concentrate on the last stressor, "Relationships," and explore a strategy you may not be familiar with for resolving conflicts in workplace relationships. When workplace relationships break down there can be significant human and business costs if you leave them to fester. I only have to reference some 2022 statistics to prove that this can be costly; stress, depression or anxiety accounted for 51% of all work-related ill health cases and 55% of all working days lost due to work-related ill health.

When workplace conflicts arise, mediation can be a powerful tool to help get relationships back on track and to re-create a workplace where people feel safe and not in conflict. I will caveat that effective mediation is a specialist skill – not all of us can do it, it requires training to do well and there isn’t a set model to follow as you need the skill to adapt your approach to the people involved. However, HSE professionals and managers have lots of skills and experience to draw on regarding the ‘people’ side of the job. After all, the fundamental skills employed in mediation - communication, influencing and compassion - are all attributes of a great HSE professional. And there are things you can do if a workplace conflict is in the early stages: 

• Spot it early
  Being present in the workplace and having open and honest conversations with workers, you can learn to spot issues when they start. Don’t ignore things and hope it will resolve. 

• Give people the time and space to talk. 
  Talk to individuals separately – preferably in a neutral place – to allow them to talk to you openly. Encourage them to focus on the facts, sometimes people’s past experiences cloud their judgement and interpretation of other people’s words and actions. What actually happened? These conversations might give you ideas for easy actions that ease the source of a conflict. 

• Don’t attempt mediation where you have a close relationship
  If you have a relationship or friendship with one of the people involved, then you are not a suitable mediator. Similarly, if you are involved in a conflict and hold a more senior position, getting a third party is important too – don’t try to negotiate it yourself. Impartiality is absolutely key

• Establish ground rules
  If or when you facilitate a discussion between people, establish rules before you begin: confidentiality, respect and not interrupting are all simple rules to follow that allow people to feel they are participating in a fair process. Participants can take notes if there are specific things they would like to respond to, without interrupting the other person. 

In my opinion, the most important thing you can do when there is a workplace conflict, is to know when things are out of your skill set and recruit a skilled third-party to carry out the process. Yes, it can be expensive, but much cheaper than long-term absence, grievance processes, recruitment, decreased productivity… you get the idea. And even then, mediation is not always successful. Sometimes it might be that people can’t work together in harmony so you may need to look at how the workplace could be redesigned (as you would with any other health and safety risk) to reduce the impact on the people involved. 

Some of the advice in this article is taken from the NEBOSH webinar: Resolving Workplace Conflicts. You can watch the webinar for free, on-demand at: https://www.nebosh.org.uk/mediation-webinar/

NEBOSH also offers two qualifications to support wellbeing in the workplace: 

• NEBOSH HSE Certificate in Managing Stress at Work: www.nebosh.org.uk/hsestress

• Working with Wellbeing:  www.nebosh.org.uk/workingwithwellbeing

Matt Powell-Howard is head of product development at NEBOSH. For more information, visit www.nebosh.org.uk