Conflict Resolution Training in London

What Workplace Conflict Costs Before It Becomes Formal

Acas estimates that workplace conflict costs UK employers around £28.5 billion a year, once grievances, absence, resignations and lost productivity are added up. The figure comes from the Acas report Estimating the costs of workplace conflict (2021), which puts the total annual cost of conflict to employers, including management and resolution, at that level. It is not a wellbeing line item. It is a profit and loss one.

Most of that bill is not made of tribunal claims. It is made of ordinary moments handled badly: the feedback that landed as an accusation, the disagreement nobody named, the manager who picked a side instead of holding the middle. By the time a case reaches a formal procedure, the behavioural moment that could have settled it cheaply has usually passed months earlier. Acas continues to track how prevalent individual conflict at work is in Great Britain, and our separate write-up of that research sets out the prevalence and impact figures in detail.

This is also what Acas itself advises. Its guidance on dealing with a problem raised by an employee opens with the line that many problems at work can be resolved informally, for example through an informal chat, and warns that a problem not taken seriously at that stage might be raised as a formal grievance later. The cheapest intervention available to any London employer is a conversation. It is also the one almost nobody has practised.

Conflict Competence Is a Rehearsed Skill, Not a Body of Knowledge

Nobody escalates a dispute because they were unaware the grievance procedure existed. They escalate because the human handling of the problem went wrong, early, in a room. That distinction decides what conflict resolution training actually has to change, and it is the reason so many programmes score well on the feedback form and move nothing on the floor.

The behaviour-change model we work from is the COM-B system set out by Michie, van Stralen and West in Implementation Science (2011), in which capability, opportunity and motivation interact to generate behaviour. Capability covers both knowledge and skill. A session on conflict styles addresses the knowledge half and leaves the skill half untouched.

Conflict skill is performed under load. When someone becomes defensive in front of you, your pulse rises, your attention narrows, and you fall back on whatever response your nervous system already owns. If the calm, curious version has never been attempted under that pressure, it is not available when the pressure arrives.

Where the Acas Procedure Fits, and Where It Stops

Procedure matters, and credible training should teach the frame as well as the behaviour. The Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures describes itself as the minimum an employer should follow, and Acas notes that the procedure an employer follows, and the employee's actions, will be taken into account if a case reaches an employment tribunal.

Early conciliation sits at the other end of the same system. Acas describes it as a legal process in which a conciliator helps both sides reach an agreement and avoid a tribunal. Notification to Acas is required before a claim can be made, but Acas states plainly that early conciliation is voluntary and that both parties choose whether to take part.

Read together, those two facts describe a framework that manages conflict competently once a relationship has broken and does very little to stop the break. Procedure is the fallback. Prevention happens earlier, in the behaviour of one manager in one room, and that is the part training has to build.

How Sidestream Runs Conflict Resolution Training in London

Sidestream is a behaviour change consultancy based at 58 Malden Road, London NW5 3HG, and most of this work is delivered in-house at client offices across London. The method is immersive: professional actors stage the dispute with the social pressure intact, and participants handle it live rather than discussing it in the abstract.

Scenarios are built from the organisation's own material. A short diagnostic first establishes which conflicts actually recur, whether that is the performance conversation that keeps turning into a grievance, the two teams that stopped cooperating after a restructure, or the senior person nobody challenges. The actors are briefed on those specifics, so managers rehearse their own difficult conversation rather than a generic one.

A typical format is a half-day of four hours with 12 to 25 participants and one or two scripted scenarios. Longer programmes suit organisations rehearsing several conflict types across a whole management population. Work is priced per engagement rather than by a day rate, because the effort sits in the scenario design.

In a controlled 2020 UCL study by co-founder Ben Laumann (n = 57), rehearsal with a role-play coach produced significantly better feedback delivery than an instructional slideshow or video, rated blind by two independent assessors.

What Gets Rehearsed

The scenarios change with the client. The behaviours underneath are consistent, and each one is attempted, stopped, coached and attempted again rather than described.

Feedback comes from the actor in role, from the facilitator and from peers, and then the attempt is repeated. The repetition is the mechanism. A behaviour attempted once is an anecdote. A behaviour attempted three times with correction starts to hold under pressure.

• Naming a problem plainly without triggering a defence, and staying in the room after naming it.
• Holding the middle between two colleagues who have stopped speaking, without becoming a third party to the dispute.
• Receiving a challenge from a direct report without retaliating, dismissing it or over-apologising.
• Separating the position someone is arguing from the interest underneath it, then testing that interest out loud.
• Deciding in the moment whether an issue stays informal or moves to the formal procedure, and saying which, clearly.
• Repairing a working relationship after a dispute has been formally resolved but the atmosphere has not.

How the Result Is Measured

Measurement sits at Kirkpatrick Level 3, meaning observed behaviour back at work, rather than at Level 1 satisfaction. A feedback form tells you whether people enjoyed the day. It tells you nothing about whether the next dispute went differently.

The indicators worth baselining before delivery and re-reading around ninety days afterwards are behavioural, and most of them already sit in existing HR systems.

None of these move because a workshop happened. They move when a specific behaviour changes in a specific group of managers, which is why the design starts from the behaviour and works backwards to the scenario.

• The share of issues resolved informally, before a written grievance is raised.
• Elapsed time between the first flashpoint and the first deliberate conversation about it.
• Whether the grievances that are raised arrive earlier and smaller than they used to.
• Repeat disputes involving the same manager or the same team.
• Conflict-related absence and resignation within the affected population.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does conflict resolution training in London involve?

It involves rehearsal rather than presentation. Professional actors play the aggrieved colleague, the defensive report or the manager who will not move, and participants handle the conversation live, stop, take feedback and try again. A typical half-day runs four hours with 12 to 25 participants and one or two scenarios built from disputes the organisation actually has. Sessions are usually delivered in-house at client offices across London.

How much does workplace conflict cost UK employers?

Acas estimates that workplace conflict costs UK employers around £28.5 billion a year, once the cost of grievances, absence, resignations and lost productivity is added up. Most of that spend is avoidable, and much of it traces back to conversations that were handled badly or avoided entirely rather than to formal disputes. The figure comes from the Acas report Estimating the costs of workplace conflict.

Is this the same as workplace mediation training?

No. Accredited mediator training qualifies a person to run a formal mediation between two parties and is a separate discipline with its own certification. This programme builds the everyday conflict capability of line managers and leaders: the conversation that happens long before a mediator is needed, and that usually determines whether one is needed at all. Organisations often want both, in that order.

Does the training cover the Acas Code and the grievance procedure?

Yes, as the frame around the behaviour. Participants work through what the Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures requires, when an informal issue should become a formal one, and what needs recording. Acas describes the Code as the minimum an employer should follow and notes that the procedure followed is taken into account if a case reaches a tribunal. The rehearsal then covers what procedure cannot: the conversation itself.

How do you know the training changed anything?

Measurement sits at Kirkpatrick Level 3, meaning observed behaviour at work rather than satisfaction scores. Before delivery we baseline a small number of indicators the organisation already collects, such as the share of issues resolved informally, how quickly a flashpoint is followed by a real conversation, and whether grievances arrive earlier and smaller. Those are re-read around ninety days later.

Who should attend?

Line managers, team leads and senior leaders who hold the conversations that decide whether a dispute grows or settles. Groups of 12 to 25 work best, because everyone needs a turn in front of the actor. Mixed-level groups can work when an organisation wants shared language across a management population, though sessions where people rehearse in front of their own line manager need careful design.

Related Sidestream Guides

• the Acas conflict prevalence and cost figures in full
• why the CIPD-Acas collaboration puts conflict skills back on the agenda
• how to handle difficult conversations at work
• role-play training with professional actors
• psychological safety training in London
• building a speak-up culture in London teams
• how to measure behaviour change at Kirkpatrick Level 3

Sources: Acas, Estimating the costs of workplace conflict (2021) · Acas, Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures · Acas, Early conciliation · Acas, Dealing with a problem raised by an employee · Acas, Prevalence of conflict at work in Great Britain · Michie, van Stralen and West (2011), The behaviour change wheel, Implementation Science