Mediation in the workplace

Overview

• Ewan Keen, partner at Simons Muirhead & Burton looks at what mediation is and how effective it can be as a means of dispute resolution in the workplace
• The government believes that ‘a significant growth in mediation of workplace disputes has the potential to lead to a major and dramatic shift in the culture of employment relations’. As part of its Resolving Workplaces Disputes programme, it intends to initiate a long-term reform programme so that mediation becomes a more accepted part of resolving disputes without the recourse to tribunals
• In mediation, an impartial third party, the ‘mediator’, helps two or more people in dispute, the ‘participants’, to attempt to reach a mutually agreed solution to a problem
• Any agreement comes from those in dispute - not from the mediator
• Mediation should create a safe and confidential space for participants to find their own answers.
• Mediation can be carried out by trained internal mediators or an organisation can use external mediators
• Any organisational initiative needs to be reinforced on an on-going basis if it is to become accepted practice
• There is little point having a mediation scheme available if it has little profile and it is not actively promoted as a viable dispute resolution option at every opportunity where it would be suitable
• The five vital components of mediation are: informal, flexible, voluntary, morally binding (but no legal status) and confidential

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