I enjoyed a recent report on CNBC Africa about office politics in companies in America saying that the majority of employees would leave a company if a suitable job was available due to office politics. When the number is that high, one has to think that perhaps the problem really is that people struggle to get on, when working closely together for any lengthy period of time because after all, a marriage is also work and more than two-thirds of them also end in divorce!

In my own experience, and this is a generalisation, the more petty aspects of office politics generally arise with one’s younger staff, and one’s older, more experienced staff who have worked at other companies previously generally have less time for office politics, don’t really get involved and don’t have as many issues with it. It may be because they realise that the environment they find themselves in is to a large extent, although not always, of their making or within their control, and there is no particular reason to get terribly worked up about it, or indeed to make it difficult or unpleasant. It probably helps to have a healthy balance of staff in a company across a wide ambit of ages and for people to take a mature attitude to the working environment, because you are after all there to work and not to have problems that often relate not so much to the work but social issues.