The rates HPtE uses to put a figure on the Conflict Tax, where each one comes from, and the adjustments we made so a finance team can check every step.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been exploring a single idea from three different angles — and what it reveals about the conflict tax across the organisation is something every leadership team needs to see. The idea is the Conflict Tax — the compounding cost of avoidance. Not the cost of conflict itself, but the…

Finance professionals see the Conflict Tax in overtime spend, project overruns, and KPI contradictions. HR and IR Directors see it in grievance patterns and repeat disputes. But there’s a third perspective that neither fully captures — and it’s where the conflict tax in operations hits hardest. Operations. Operational leaders live with the Conflict Tax every…

HR and IR Directors are the most conflict-experienced people in any organisation. You understand conflict better than any other function — and the conflict tax in HR is costing more than anyone has measured. You’ve sat in more grievance hearings, mediation sessions, and collective disputes than anyone else in the building. And yet — most…

Every finance professional I’ve worked with knows their cost base inside out. They can tell you the variance on any line item, the trend on any cost centre, the forecast for any quarter. But there’s a cost most of them have never measured — and it’s costing finance teams more than they realise. I call…