Conflict in the office is often a major problem — feuding employees get in each other’s way and bring down efficiency and pollute the working atmosphere, making it of central importance to employees and employers alike.

Conflict is an inescapable part of life — much as we might like to, no one can get along with everybody all the time. This is true at home, and it is true at work as well. In the workplace environment, it is a particularly serious problem; not only does it make the office an unpleasant place to be, it also decreases efficiency, making it a central managerial concern.

Workplace conflict can take many forms, from just irritated looks or comments to sexual harassment or full-fledged physical or verbal abuse. Fortunately, the latter types of conflict are relatively rare and may require resorting to legal channels, so we will limit our discussion on conflict at work to its less pernicious manifestations.

Such conflict between employees can arise for a number of reasons. Plain old dislike of another person’s personality or manner is one. Another is a difference in approaches to work. For instance, one person might work at a slower pace than another, causing an employee to take on more work than he or she considers fair.

Although workplace conflict can become so aggravated that one or both of the persons involved may be obligated to leave the company — either voluntarily or at the insistence of the employer — there are usually ways to get around it. Prompt and unambiguous communication is essential; if you have a problem with a fellow employee, tell him or her! They may not even be aware that you are having difficulties with them. Keeping things to yourself and just bottling up resentment and frustration won’t accomplish anything and might even make the problem worse by making you more irritable and harder to deal with. Hopefully, you’ll be able to resolve the problem; maybe there was a misunderstanding about work procedure. If need be, a trusted and disinterested third party can be called in, possibly some form of peer review — used at many leading institutions — or someone in management.