UK workforce prioritises developing conflict management and communication skills in 2022

Global talent development leader CoachHub finds that employees chose to work on conflict management and emotional regulation with their coaches over other topics such as time management.

Conflict resolution in the workplace might be more challenging than employers expect. Employees in every age group and across the world identified conflict management as their top area for growth, according to recent insights from CoachHub, the leading global digital coaching platform. In 2022, employees globally also chose to improve their emotional regulation, time management, resilience and communication skills.

While time management and resilience are top buzzwords in the business community, CoachHub insights show employees are more focused on managing their emotions on the job. CoachHub collected these skills gap insights by analysing aggregated anonymous user feedback on its coaching platform. The feedback includes aggregated anonymous employees’ answers to self-assessment questions. Developed by the company’s behavioural scientists, CoachHub’s self-assessment questions help match employees to their ideal coaches and personalise their one-on-one coaching sessions. The metrics pinpoint where employees see their own opportunities for development and shed light on global employees’ challenges.

“Conflict is part of the human experience, and managing conflict can be particularly difficult during times of volatility and change. And that’s what these insights suggest — global events are putting increasing pressure on employees who are desperate for strategies to ease tensions in their everyday interactions,” said Rosie Evans, Head of Behavioural Science EMEA at CoachHub.

Other key insights include:

• Conflict Management is the main focus area across all generations.
• The top 5 areas coachees worked on the most as their focus areas in 2022 globally were: Conflict Management, Emotional Regulation, Time Management, Resilience and Communication.

The top five areas of focus remained stable from 2021 to 2022, but Emotional Regulation saw a rise from 3rd place to 2nd, globally.

• Time Management is a higher concern for those coachees aged 20-35, while age groups above 35 indicate Emotional Regulation as a higher priority in coaching.

“I’m thrilled to see statistics measuring how coachees interact with our platform, personalise the coaching experience to meet their specific needs and then grow as individuals, both inside and outside of the office,” says Yannis Niebelschuetz, CEO of CoachHub. “These insights further underscore the importance of CoachHub’s mission to democratise coaching — make high-quality, personalised coaching available to all employees — in an effort to support individual, collective and organisation transformation. While today’s transformation requires conflict resolution, who knows what problems coaching will solve tomorrow.”