Managing Workplace Conflict
January 14, 2010
Managing workplace conflict is an ever increasing and time consuming feature of the human resource professionals’ role and for those engaged in people management generally.
A recent OPP/CIPD survey records that almost half (48%) of HR professionals devote half a day per week dealing with conflict situations and a significant majority (83%) say that conflict management is a ‘very’ or ‘critically’ important leadership skill.
In addition, the statutory requirements changed in April last year and place a greater emphasis on the regulation and avoidance of conflict internally to the workplace and discourage external reference to employment tribunals.
In response to this research and legislative developments, the University of Glamorgan is launching a unique postgraduate programme on the subject of The Management of Workplace Conflict.
The Glamorgan Business School has put together the UK’s first Postgraduate Certificate, Postgraduate Diploma and full Masters Degree suite of qualifications to embrace the essential areas of study in this critical part of the workplace environment.
Michael Murdoch who is leading this suite of courses at Glamorgan said, “There is a large demand for increased knowledge and training in this area of employment relations and human resource management. Workplace disputes are costly to all parties, in time and money; there is a high administrative burden for all; the average cost to business of defending an employment claim is estimated at £9,000. There is also the stress and damaged employment prospects for employees.
“Our new courses are directed at those working in HR and operational managers who manage people and who want to be better equipped to deal with this area of work. The modules on the courses are the result of considerable research and dialogue with senior business, government and ACAS representatives and identified as the core subjects for study.”
The programme includes modules on Conflict Regulation and Avoidance and Workplace Behaviours, Equalities and Diversity and Governance and Leadership and is delivered on weekends.
For more information on this course, along with other courses in the Human Resource Management field please vist our HRM courses page.
For information on all our postgraduate courses and the opportunites available to you please visit our Postgraduate Study area.
Notes to editors:
The OPP/CIPD calculates that in the UK, each employee spends on average 1.8 hours, per week, dealing with workplace conflict. This translates into 370 million working days lost every year!
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) believes, “there’s no doubt that more needs to be done to help employers resolve conflict in the workplace.” Additionally, in a joint study with the business psychology firm OPP, the CIPD found that poorly managed conflicts at work cost British employers more than £24bn a year. In this context the CIPD is urging employers to have conflict management as an integral part of management training, as “conflict costs employers time, money, employee commitment and reputation.”
Tagged: business
