We want to help your managers prevent, contain and resolve conflict within your organisation

Skilled managers are the key to good employee experiences, engagement and performance

Get our free high impact low burden training for your managers as part of an ESRC funded research project

The Economic and Social Research Council, as part of UK Research and Innovation, are funding an innovative research project lead by the University of Westminster, with Sheffield University and Acas.

Skilled Managers is a high quality, research-based, online training intervention, which we can offer free to selected organisations, as part of an investigation into the impact of managerial conflict competence on employee engagement and productivity.

Skilled Managers is designed to work around your managers' daily schedules. With just 2-3 hours course time supplemented by a unique follow-up interactive toolkit, it provides a flexible and accessible approach to building skills and confidence.

Conflict in the workplace

UK workers spend almost 2 hours a week dealing with conflict

370 million days are lost to workers dealing with conflict

More than 1 million UK workers take time off every year due to being involved in conflict

58% of people who experience conflict suffer from stress, anxiety or depression

More than 4/10 people who experience conflict are less motivated or committed in work

The intervention is designed for line managers but anyone with people management responsibilities could benefit. We are happy to discuss this on a case-by-case basis.

This has to be a minimum of at least 3 months after the first (treatment) group of managers complete the training. Otherwise, there is insufficient time to identify any impacts.

The intervention is deliberately designed to be ‘low burden’. The core training course typically takes around 2-3 hours to complete, but can be paused and resumed at any time. However, if learners wish to explore all the materials they can spend longer on this.

We will train all the managers involved in the research (treatment and control) free of charge and all those that complete will get free access to our toolkit for up to 12 months. If you want to subsequently give additional managers access to the intervention, we will be happy to provide this at cost, please contact us for more information about our commercial offer.

We can’t include additional modules but we are happy to make minor changes such as branding and imagery to fit your organisational style and if necessary we can amend scenarios and simulations to reflect your challenges and fit your context. We are also happy to create links to your policies and procedures.

We are looking for organisations with multiple managers responsible for distinct sites or operations so that we can create a treatment and a control group. However if your organisation does not fit this model then please contact us about our commercial offer that may be of interest to you.

We don’t need you to gather any new data. We will work with you to identify existing data that we can use to measure impact. This could include turnover, absence, discipline and grievance numbers and engagement. We can also supply, administer and analyse a bespoke 10 item engagement pulse survey.

Yes. The project is covered by strict ethical and data management protocols overseen by the Universities of Sheffield and Westminster. All data will be anonymised and reported at a summary rather than an individual level. The identities of individual managers will also be protected. Under the terms of our funding, we have to deposit our data in the ESRC data archive, however this will be fully anonymised, and organisations or individuals involved in the project will not be indentifiable.

We would be happy to work with you to extend the intervention to other groups of managers outside the project. There would be a cost attached to this, please contact us about our commercial offer.

We will contact each organisation when managers’ access to the platform is due to expire (after 12 months) and discuss the potential to extend and/or develop their use of Skilled Managers.

Get involved in the project.

University of Westminster
The University of Sheffield
ACAS
University of Westminster

Westminster Business School
35 Marylebone Road
London NW1 5LS

University of Sheffield

Sheffield University Management School
Conduit Rd
Sheffield S10 1FL

ACAS

Acas National, 8th Floor Windsor House
50 Victoria Street
London SW1H 0TL

If you would like to apply for a place or know more about the project, complete the form below and we'll be in touch.