Member Article

New Workplace Mediation initiative

~~Disappointed with the Legal System, Three Professionals Form Workplace Mediation Partnership

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Imagine this…. You manage a team in a call centre. An employee has stolen a computer game from a colleague’s car and has refused to release it. Other employees are changing the language on each other’s computers or disturbing the working time with some commotion. Someone mutilates an ID card with a permanent marker. You could be forgiven in discounting this as just boisterous behaviour or just normal office ‘banter’ but matters soon spin out of control. Someone goes ‘over the edge’ and attacks a co-worker at their desk and kicks them unconscious. It may sound as if this is in the realms of fantasy but these incidents were all too real. They took place in a call centre in the North East in 2013. The result was that eight employees had their contracts terminated as well as the manager - although later, she was successful with her claim at the employment tribunal for unfair dismissal.

Having seen the cost and consequences of many cases of conflict in the workplace such as the incident described above professionals Andrew, Bridget and Wannette were inspired by the results mediation can bring to the workplace, especially considering the high cost of adversarial procedures in employment cases. (The average cost of defending a claim at Tribunal is £8,500.00), not to mention management time spent in following procedures, the reputational damage to both claimant and respondent. It led them each, separately, to pursue qualifications in Workplace Mediation. They met on an intensive residential course earlier this year and an immediate meeting of minds occurred.

After preparing cases and representing Respondents at over 35+ tribunals, Andrew had grown disenchanted with the negative outcomes, especially given that Tribunals rarely result in people getting what they really want and need and usually mean that working relations become damaged beyond repair.

Wannette’s PhD examined the relationship between human rights law and intractable conflicts. She then spent many years conducting research and undertaking human rights cases, often pro bono. Her experience of the adversarial legal system and internal procedures that often did little to respect human rights, led her to refocus on mediation as a better way of resolving conflict.

Bridget had already been working as a community mediator and her experiences showed how mediation can rebuild relations even in the most intractable cases so she wanted to bring her skills and experiences to the workplace to help businesses retain their talent and improve productivity.

Andrew, Bridget and Wannette conferred regularly during the writing process for the qualification and they quickly realised how complimentary their experiences and talents were and that they could work well together and so they formed Cognize Workplace Mediation. They are taking a fresh look at mediation in the workplace and are developing ground-breaking methods to enable them to be effective in a range of sectors such as; SME’s, multi-nationals, government, voluntary and community sectors.

They are the first in their field to develop a Workplace Mediation technique, specific to the needs of the higher education sector. They are also pioneering Distance Workplace Mediation by Skype. The cost of mediation is significantly less than the cost of time-consuming and expensive Tribunals and makes for good business sense. Mediation also has the added benefit of improving future working relationships, less stress for workers and can take place quickly. It was reported today that the UK productivity gap is; “biggest since records began” . The productivity gap between the UK and the other G7 countries is the biggest it’s been since comparable estimates began in 1991. Surely workplace mediation would go a long way to addressing this sad state of affairs.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Bridget Morris .