Got Conflict? How to Measure the Dollar Cost of Negative Conflict in Your Workplace
/[updated February 24, 2021]
Got Conflict? Is it helping or hurting your team? Find out right now by measuring the dollar costs.
“Show me the money!”
In my work with companies around conflict and its costs, I have heard that iconic statement from many, many people. Business savvy folks want to know what a conflict is actually costing them in real dollars. We set out in 2013 to build a single calculator that would show exactly that, and the result is the Cost of Conflict Calculator™. A few years later and over 2,000 responses (and counting as we continue to successfully offer this tool), that journey has reinforced three major points:
There is a duality to conflict. Conflict will always exist and there are positive and negative outcomes from conflict depending upon how it is managed.
Creativity and innovation are deeply affected by how a work team deals with conflicting ideas and task conflicts.
We are able to measure and put a value on the positive and negative outcome of conflicts.
What is the Cost of Conflict Calculator™?
The major benefit of the Cost of Conflict Calculator™ is that it looks at negative outcomes from conflict in a new way — from the point of view of the actual and potential dollar costs to the organization. This important intel starts a conversation within the leadership team that is different, quantifiable, and actionable. Unmanaged or ignored conflict nearly always ends badly for the people involved, the team, and often the entire organization. Motivated by the high costs of conflict in your workplace, leadership can then begin to understand and work with conflict in its early stages.
This user-friendly tool estimates what the team has spent so far and how much it will spend in the future on unproductive outcomes from conflict. It outputs easily measured, solid dollar costs that are based on industry research and the users’ custom answers. It is based on an anonymous nine-question survey given to a company individual or team. The most common and largest dollar value costs are calculated.
Features
Calculates multiple costs
Outputs past, current and future expenditures
Provides instant online results
Requires no sign-in
Is confidential
Includes a full report feature
It’s FREE to use
Among the costs of conflict we identified…
In our research to develop this tool, we identified 37 costs that came as a result of negative outcomes from conflict, and which fall into the categories of easily measured solid costs, difficult to measure solid costs of negative outcomes, and the difficult to measure real costs of not enough positive outcomes.
Here is a list of the easily measurable solid costs that could be at play in your organization. A study called Workplace Conflict & Employment Lawsuit Statistics, updated in 2020, offers some sobering aggregate numbers to support this list, such as “around $359 billion in hours paid that are filled with — and focused on — conflict instead of on positive productivity.” Worth an honest comb-through of these items, wouldn’t you say?
WASTED TIME - real productivity cost of wasted time. Company paid for time and got nothing.
WASTED OPPORTUNITY for Billable Hours - Services were not performed so no billing or production toward service happened.
LOST TIME - Due to absenteeism. sick leave, lost performance due to conflict-related absenteeism. Company paid for time and got nothing
LOST OPPORTUNITY - Due to absenteeism for billable hours. Services were not performed. Services were not performed so no billing or production toward service happened.
STAFF TURNOVER RELATED, ATTRITION - Severance/ termination package costs - voluntary or involuntary, recruitment and staffing costs, training and development costs associated with new replacement employees, loss of human capital investment in skilled employees, loss of opportunity for billable hours during transition and training.
LEGAL SUPPORT - fees and time associated with inside and/or outside support from attorney's, arbitrators, and outside decision making entities.
NON-LEGAL SUPPORT - fees and time associated with inside and/or outside support from mediators, therapists, counselors, specialty trainers and other conflict crisis managers.
FORMALIZED CONFLICT/GRIEVANCES PROCESS
WORKMAN'S COMPENSATION
FINE/PENALTIES
Among the difficult to measure are often known as “soft” or “opportunity” costs that don’t provide enough positive outcomes, and are no less damaging to the health of an organization:
Lack of New Ideas and Innovation, Reduced Creativity and Lower Motivation
Diminished Problem Solving Capacity and degraded quality
Lost Market-Entry Opportunities (short and long-term) or Delays
Quality of Product or Service Diminished
Reputation in the Industry, among Employees and Prospective Employees
Loss of Core Skilled Employees
Erosion of Shareholder Value
Conflict is normal, inevitable, and some would argue required to succeed. The real question is whether or not you and your team will experience positive or negative outcomes as a result of it. The Conflict Calculator™ measures the costs that can be most reliably measured, in a quick to use format.
Please try it out, support your team, share it with people you know who may be able to use it, and please, let us know what you think.
When we join a company, partnership or team, our expectation is that everyone involved will exhibit professional behavior toward us and each other. Instead, it’s highly possible that we may become one of the more than 60 million adults in the United States who are affected in some way by bullying behavior at work.
What kind of behaviors are we talking about? Our definition is any interpersonal behavior that causes emotional distress in others sufficient enough to impede their productivity or disrupt organizational functioning. It isn’t just a personality conflict — it’s a chronic pattern of disrespectful behavior.