What is mediation in the workplace?
Many people will have gone through their entire working lives without coming across mediation in the workplace. Hopefully, that is something that will change with time – not because there is more conflict, but because organisations are more open to resolving disagreements and conflicts as they happen in a more productive and resolution-focussed way.
Mediation in the workplace can take place in a number of different scenarios.
It could be something that takes place before someone gets taken down a formal grievance or disciplinary route to see if that solves the issue, or perhaps you’ve already tried that and it didn’t make anything better.
You may be receiving complaints about particular members of the team but nothing formal has been raised and you feel as though your hands are tied.
There may be dysfunction in a team or between teams because there has been a falling out with key people in those teams and sides have been taken.
It may even be that you work with a supplier or associate and things haven’t been going well between you lately and you might have an idea what caused the disruption but you cant put your finger on it.
What all of these things have in common is a breakdown in a relationship between people.
It happens! Humans are messy and complicated and conflict in the workplace is just an inevitable part of life.
How that conflict is dealt with, is what makes the experiences of those involved and the workplace itself constructive, or destructive.
Mediation in the workplace is at its very basic level, an honest conversation. It is facilitated by someone skilled in holding a safe space in order to make sure that the real issues are dealt with and then focusses on a resolution-based approach, designed to allow for a workable relationship moving forward.
The process is straightforward. Each individual involved has a meeting with the mediator to talk about what has been going on. Once these individual sessions have taken place (and there may well be two meetings) a joint session is held.
It may be a bit nerve wracking to have this joint meeting, but workplace mediation really requires a sitting down and getting all the issues on the table for there to be any chance of resolving the situation and looking for a way forward. Mediation in the workplace is wherever possible looking for a solution. A future where working together is manageable – that in itself should remove the stress and tension of a conflict that would otherwise have been left unresolved. You don’t have to leave a mediation being best friends, but at least be in agreement of how you are going to handle working together.
Workplace mediation is a voluntary process and only works if all involved are fully committed to fixing whatever it is that has broken. It has no legal consequence, you can’t be forced to do it and importantly, it is strictly confidential. What happens in mediation, stays in mediation unless there is agreement by all that some information may be shared. In the case of workplace mediation for example, it may well be that certain aspects of the agreement need to be given to HR or a manager just because of the practicalities of what has been agreed.
Mediation in the workplace is becoming more common as the benefits of mediation become more and more apparent. The valuable skillsets used by a mediator are increasingly being recognised by HR teams and conflict resolution skills are now being seen as important for managers to have to enable successful management of conflict as it happens, without it getting out of hand.