Mediation provides a confidential, structured and effective means of avoiding the significant costs of Employment Tribunals and the Courts. A Professional Mediator will bring disputes to resolution in a quicker, more efficient and cost effective manner. Because of the Confidential Nature of Mediation it is particularly suited to resolving conflict arising from, bullying, harassment, restructuring & redundancy and mis-interpretation of employment rights & contracts. It is not in a company’s or employee’s interest to have these disputes aired in public as it invariably leads to bad publicity and damaged reputations.
How does Employment Law Mediation function in the Workplace
Mediation provides certainty to the parties in that they will sign up to their own resolution and thus it can also deliver to the parties benefits unavailable in an employment tribunal or court. Where the relationship looks as if it might be salvaged, the parties can plot both steps for desired change to achieve harmony and also, where necessary an agreed exit strategy. That way, if the issues rear their ugly heads again, the parties will already have agreed how they will deal with them. If the relationship is beyond repair, benefits can be obtained by agreement which cannot be ordered by courts or tribunals: agreed references, effective covenants about workplace information and individuals, and secrecy.
The Benefits of Employment Law Mediation are:
- Success in approximately 80% of disputes mediated
- 70% quicker than litigation
- At least 30% cheaper than pursuing a case through Employment Tribunals or the Courts
- Totally confidential process between the parties
- A safe, neutral and non-threatening environment in which to discuss issues
- Completely Impartial
- An organised and constructive process
- Non judgemental and Non adversarial (as would be typical of court proceedings)
- A process leading to longer lasting agreement
- Agreed to and ‘owned’ by the parties themselves
Using an Employment Mediator will:
- Dramatically speed up the process of settling a dispute
- Give a better and more effective outcome that makes sense to the parties themselves
- Leads to greater harmoney in the workplace
- Ultimately reduce the cost of the whole process
New strategies to resolve conflict in the workplace
Where difficulties arise between workers, or with relationships between them, employers often feel that their only choice lies between disciplining one of the combatants or, removing a difficult individual. Personality clashes can be avoided or managed if an environment for resolving disputes or differences without commencing formal procedures is in place.
Mediation can fill what is currently a very expensive gap, in human, management, production and legal terms in the present strategies and structures adopted and available. New strategies to introduce Mediation are patently beneficial from all perspectives, effective strategies not only for when issues have arisen and relationships have broken down, but also as structures and means for heading off and avoiding breakdown. Entrenchment and embitterment can be avoided by the adoption of such Mediation structures and practices.
The adoption of positions of employers and employer organizations on the one hand and of employees and unions on the other have become so ingrained in Grievance and Disciplinary procedures and precedents that very often the particular problem that requires resolution, the wood, becomes totally lost in habitual responses, practices and procedures, the trees.
Mediation practices and skills will keep focus on the issues and, more particularly, on means of resolving them that are acceptable to all parties.
The value of Mediation is recognised by the Equality Tribunal and the Labour Relations Commission. Early mediation can produce resolution even before cases get to that stage. Assertions of bullying and harassment are best dealt with at the earliest possible opportunity.