Member Article

Litigation or Mediation?

Earlier this week it was reported in the local press that a North East teacher was awarded £1.5m after a series of employment tribunals following an 11 year battle with a local council.

Evidently the feud started in 2004 following a disagreement with her headmistress over netball practice.

Reportedly, the teacher spent £230,000 defending herself.

Legal fees incurred by the council have not yet been disclosed.

In reality, there are no actual _‘winners’_resulting from this case. Whereas, mediation almost always ends in a win/win situation.

Both disputants will have suffered; stress, emotional disturbance, not only for themselves but also for families, co-workers and colleagues, reputational damage and credibility. Not to mention the high costs involved in litigation.

However, every problem contains an opportunity.

At the beginning of this saga in 2004 workplace mediation did not quite have as much prominence as it does in 2015.

After spending 35+ years of my professional life handling workplace conflicts and disputes, following almost all adversarial formal grievance and disciplinary procedures, has led me to conclude that mediation is the frame for conflict.

British Telecommunications (BT) identified that people stopped talking to each other when they had a disagreement in the workplace which, over time, made the issue much worse. It wanted to help and support its staff in some way to change this cycle by being a costs of handling grievances. It implemented workplace mediation and offered the service to all appropriate cases. During the six-month pilot, mediation was used in more than 100 grievances and disputes. A sustainable, successful resolution was found in 95% of the cases. BT estimated the savings from the programme as more than £200,000. Mediation continues to be offered as an early intervention and solution to many forms of conflict in the workplace.

In any future workplace disagreements, would not the implementation of mediation being offered as an early intervention and solution to many forms of interpersonal conflict in the workplace, be the answer to similar situations, as reported this week, ever proceeding to costly litigation?

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by The Business Medic .