British businesses are losing thousands of pounds every year thanks to office grudges. Petty arguments and long-lasting communications breakdowns between staff are rife in UK businesses up and down the country, including one that's known in the company concerned as 'The Gary Barlow Incident'. It's an issue that companies should be addressing as staff conflict is one of the major reasons company production can falter, with resulting costs in sales, sick pay and – ultimately – legal fees should a dispute end up at a tribunal. Protecting.co.uk, the national health and safety and employment law consultancy, says that bosses up and down the country are failing to spot petty fall-outs that can rumble of for years with implications for staff morale and company profits.
“It might sound like something from a black-and-white Ealing Comedy made in the post-war years,” says Protecting.co.uk spokesperson Mark Hall, “but workplace grudges are a genuine phenomenon that have lasting effects right across businesses.
“Sometimes whole companies fall apart because of in-house tribalism literally crippling production, and sometimes managers don't even realise there's a problem, or that they might be the root cause.” Protecting.co.uk spoke to dozens of employers and employees and found horror stories that backed if its claims that companies suffer hugely from the pettiest of grudges: One company ground to a halt for three days over a dispute that stemmed from stolen milk in a communal fridge. “We ended up buying six fridges – one for each department. Ludicrous,” said one exasperated manager. Staff at one small engineering company reckons it lost thousands in productivity simply because two employees refused to talk to each other for over a decade. “They both did their job well, but lack of communication meant that problems never got resolved, and management never once intervened,” a colleague said. “All over a couple of hours' overtime, too.”
And possibly the most petty we've heard is still known locally as 'The Gary Barlow Incident': “Two of our clerical staff wouldn't even be in the same room together, after one drew a moustache on the other's picture of Gary Barlow. The worst bit was that it was a whiteboard marker and wiped straight off, but it was 'the principle of the thing', and had to go to arbitration with internal transfers and everything. I was that moustache fiend, and I wouldn't have done it if I knew it would have got that nasty.” Petty grudges have a habit of becoming serious if left unaddressed by both staff and managers, and Protecting says that often the only way to deal with in-house problems is to actually speak to each other.
While this sounds obvious, many organisations have an 'us vs them' attitude between staff and management that means this rarely happens. But when it does, results are clear, according to one boss who spoke to us: “Our department had an all-staff away-day to thrash out our problems,” said the manager at one of Britain's major institutions. “In fact, it lasted for two days, and it turned out it was my unreasonable attitude that had literally broken staff morale. It was a sobering experience to say the least.” If left unaddressed, companies can find themselves in a circle of mistrust and anger that could lead to resignations, strikes, and the unnecessary stress and expense of employment tribunals. The problem remains spotting this kind of behaviour in offices or the shop floor before it gets out of hand. “This is the best bit of free advice you'll hear today,” says Hall. “Speak with your staff, learn their problems and help them deal with them. “Happy staff are productive staff. Petty grudges have no place in work.”
