What workplace conflict costs UK employers every year.
Per employee, per year, whether you act or not.
What formal procedures cost versus resolving the same issue informally.
People who resign over conflict each year.
You're already paying for conflict. The only question is which end of the curve you pay at.
Source: Acas, Estimating the costs of workplace conflict (2021)Everyone else trains the manager to talk. We make it safe for everyone to speak.
Not a skills course. Infrastructure.
Radical Candor, Crucial Conversations, NVC: all train the individual, and almost always the manager. None of them answer the question that actually stops conversations before they start: what does the other person do when I try my new skill on them, and what happens to me afterwards? Candid Chat answers that question first, and teaches the skill second.
One signal, six steps, three movements.
“I'd like to have a Candid Chat with you about…”
That sentence is the whole invocation. From the moment it's said, both parties already know what follows, because everyone in the building learned the same six steps.
The initiator's part is three sentences. That is the entire ask of an employee.
The guarantee is the product.
Signed by the leadership team at launch: starting, receiving or pausing a Candid Chat can never touch your reviews, your record or your prospects. Either party can say “pause” at any moment and the conversation stops. The safeword does what safewords do: it stops things, safely. Nothing is logged.
Without the guarantee, a framework is a leaflet. With it, people use it on their second day.
Two numbers you already know. Your cost, on screen, no email.
Runs on independent Acas research. Nothing you type leaves this page.
Total employees in the organisation.
Formal interpersonal cases HR actually handled.
HR and manager time, absence and cover, turnover, legal spend. Leave it blank and we'll use the Acas-implied figure instead.
Acas per-employee cost across your headcount. Spent whether or not anyone talks.
Two thirds of your formal-case spend, if the same tensions had been settled early instead.
Indexed: settling it early costs 1. Letting it go formal costs three times that or more.
The gap between those two bars is the entire business case.
Directional estimates based on national averages. Not a quote, and not legal or financial advice. Source: Acas, Estimating the costs of workplace conflict (2021): £28.5bn a year to UK employers, over £1,000 per employee per year, and formal procedures costing three times informal resolution or more.
Four ways in. Each one credits into the next.
16 questions, 8 minutes, results on screen, no email.
“Find out whether your organisation could have the conversation.”
Take the audit →Everything needed to take Candid Chat to your leadership team and launch it: the toolkit, the SLT pitch deck, the business case, print-ready cards, session runbooks and the signature-ready guarantee. Downloaded in minutes.
Whatever you pay credits in full toward a Guided Pilot.
See what is in the pack →One team, 30 days, two workshops, pulse measurement before and after, and a readout to your leadership team.
“Proof from your own building.”
Book a pilot call →The full 90-day rollout: leaders receive first, managers trained properly, conveners in place, and quarterly reviews for year one.
Book a conversation →Every proposal we send shows the programme cost next to your Acas-implied conflict cost. The arithmetic does the selling.
Ten documents and a letter. Downloaded in minutes.
Not a PDF of a framework. The whole kit for getting a yes and then launching without inventing anything: the pitch, the arithmetic, the cards, the guarantee, the sessions, the objections and the pilot.
One organisation licence, unlimited internal use. Whatever you pay credits in full toward a Guided Pilot.
Start Here
Your path to yes in five steps, sized so you can go from download to SLT-ready in one afternoon.
The Toolkit
The whole framework, designed to be printed. It opens by telling you which nine pages to read before the meeting and which twenty can wait.
The SLT Pitch Deck
Twelve slides, editable. Every one carries a word for word talk track in the speaker notes, so a reluctant presenter can read it aloud and still sound like themselves.
The One-Page Business Case
The page that gets forwarded to your CFO after the meeting. Two numbers you already have in, the arithmetic out.
The Reference Cards
Three A6 cards, print-shop ready with bleed and crop marks, plus screen versions for the intranet. No designer needed anywhere in this pack.
The No-Fault Guarantee
One page, signature-ready, with a block for every member of your leadership team. This is the document that turns a good idea into a commitment.
Announcement Templates
The all-staff email, the intranet page and the manager heads-up note, in send order, with every placeholder marked.
Manager Session Playbook
Ninety minutes, minute by minute, with what to say written out and two scripted role-plays. Two thirds of the practice time is spent being on the receiving end.
Team Session Playbook
Thirty minutes any manager can run cold, including a two-hander they read aloud with one volunteer. No preparation beyond reading it once.
When They Push Back
The eight objections you will meet, what each one is really asking underneath, and the sentence to say out loud. This is the one that makes you the most prepared person in the room.
Pilot-in-a-Box
The thirty-day one-team pilot: the plan, the two pulse questions, the three readout slides, and what a bad result looks like so you cannot quietly revise the goalposts.
A note from me
One page, in my own hand: why this exists, which parts to skip, and the one way it reliably fails. Written to be read last.
Everything you need to walk into that meeting.
One zip, downloaded in minutes. The pitch with its talk track, the arithmetic for your CFO, the cards for the desks, the guarantee ready to sign, both session playbooks, the eight objections, and the pilot you run the moment they say yes.
Nothing is locked behind a call, everything meant to be edited is editable, and whatever you pay comes off a Guided Pilot in full.
One organisation licence · unlimited internal use · no resale
475 tribunal judgments, and the same missing conversation in almost all of them.
I read every UK employment tribunal judgment I could find involving ADHD and analysed what actually happened. The pattern is not exotic. Someone struggled, somebody read it as attitude, nobody said the plain thing out loud, and the silence hardened into a case. Outcomes track manager behaviour, not claimant condition.
Candid Chat is what I built after reading them: the conversation that was missing, made ordinary and made safe.
Read the research →
Pilot quote one.
Name · Role, Organisation
Pilot quote two.
Name · Role, Organisation
The six questions every HR director asks.
01Is this a replacement for HR processes?
No. Candid Chat sits before and beside your processes, not instead of them. Most of what it handles would never have reached HR anyway. And the hard line: harassment, discrimination, safeguarding or anything unsafe goes straight to HR or your whistleblowing route. Always. Never through a Candid Chat first.
02What if the other person says no?
You can decline the timing, not the conversation. Nobody is ambushed, and nobody gets to make the subject disappear by refusing indefinitely. If it stalls, a convened version exists: a trained convener holds the room and the same six steps run with a third party present.
03What does “pause” mean?
Either party stops the conversation at any moment, no reason needed and no penalty. It resumes when both agree, or it goes to a convener. Pausing is a normal, expected, entirely respectable move, not a failure and not a mark against anyone.
04How long does rollout take?
One signature, three cards and two hours of training gets a team running. Organisation-wide is 90 days: leaders receive first so the behaviour is modelled downward, then managers, then conveners, then quarterly reviews through year one.
05Is this legal advice?
No. Candid Chat is organisational guidance and management education. It does not constitute legal advice, and organisations facing specific employment matters should seek independent counsel.
06Why “Candid Chat” and not “difficult conversation”?
Because “difficult conversation” tells you how it will feel, and candid tells you what it is for. Candid signals direction and a goal: two people getting to the plain version of something. A grievance has an audience. A Candid Chat has a settlement.
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