For many years, workplace bullying has relied on management strategies. The advice given to employers to tackle bullying at work has been, if someone makes a bullying claim, you must investigate, and that still holds true.
However, what needs to be acknowledged is that investigating bullying is reactive. By the time you need an investigation, the harm has usually occurred to individual health and your business. Workplace relationship are often salvageable.
Workplace bullying is a significantly harmful psychosocial risk, with massive cost consequences to the workplace and significant injury consequences to the target. It requires a more effective response. At the time we were told to investigate, we had less knowledge than we have today; that workplace bullying is preventable. A key way you can achieve this is by building a healthy Conflict Management Climate at work.
What is Conflict Management Climate?
Conflict Management Climate is the shared perceptions of your employees as to how your workplace manages interpersonal conflict. It’s a subjective perception on how well procedures, practices, prevailing behaviours, and the related support and reward system collectively operate and whether they are effective, or not. (Hamre, KV et al, 2021; Zahlquist, L. et al, 2019; Einarsen, S. et al, 2016)
What are the positive impacts of Conflict Management Climate?
Conflict Management Climate has a significant impact on reducing workplace bullying. Research indicates that in workplaces with a high Conflict Management Climate, the occurrence of workplace bullying is low. In workplaces with a low Conflict Management Climate, bullying rates tend to be higher. (Hamre, KV et al, 2021; Zahlquist, L. et al, 2019)
The reasons for this are somewhat simple. When conflict is managed early, employees frustration levels are reduced because this dissipates their frustration. A positive Conflict Management Climate promotes confidence in how to approach conflict early. They know where to go and what to do when conflict appears.
In environments where frustration is not addressed through early conflict intervention, that frustration escalates into interpersonal conflict, uncivil and bullying behaviour. It directly leads to the harm that occurs in your workplace. (Einarsen, S. et al, 2016)
A positive Conflict Management Climate also has the positive impact by:
- reducing insecurity, alternatively promoting predictability and perceived control;
- increasing perceptions that managers will intervene when conflict arises; and
- that conflict will be handled in a fair way according to workplace policies and procedures. (Zahlquist, L. et al, 2019)
What are the implications for your workplace?
This research tells us that we can swim upstream to intervene early and prevent workplace bullying and the harm that it causes. You can do this in your workplace by creating and maintaining a strong Conflict Management Climate.
For Human Resource Professionals
You should ensure your workplace has:
- robust conflict management systems that promote effective early intervention in conflict;
- leaders should be trained in the value of early intervention conflict management and effective conflict management techniques; and
- training should be extended to all employees, to give them the skills and confidence to intervene early, and escalate where they need additional support.
For Health and Safety Professionals
- build your knowledge on conflict management as a mitigation of workplace risk;
- ensure in reviewing bullying incidents, consider the role of conflict escalation and the workplace Conflict Management Climate in your assessment; and
- on identifying Conflict Management Climate gaps, recommend changes to the systems to help improve safety outcomes at work.
