22nd June 2010 | Posted in Mediation
We’ve written before about why Tribunals are poor places for employers and employees to go (Our broken Tribunal system and how to fix it) and we’ve also written about the strategic steps which gain maximum benefit from mediation for employers (Mediation as part of an HR Strategy). Two cases in the last month have reminded us that that the HR Manager reaching for the phone in an emergency is unnecessarily expensive and painful for all concerned.
Charity A was aware of conflict between the manager of a service and their deputy but didn’t feel justified in tacking it. The deputy raised several formal concerns over the conduct of their manager through whistleblowing procedures in January resulting in the suspension of the manager for two months while the charity investigated the issues. Following the manager’s return at the end of March the deputy suffered several long periods of stress-related absence and eventually raised a bullying and harassment grievance against her manager in May.
Meanwhile, company B received an appeal against dismissal and grievance from employee C following her redundancy. Her claims were for various discriminations and she raised issues concerning her manager going back over seven years. There were three separate occasions when she had discussed her concerns with senior managers or the HR team. Her seniority meant that her advisors estimated her claim at £500,000.
We mean no criticism of the individuals concerned when we point out that there were good opportunities for these cases to be resolved long before they arrived on our desk. This is often the way with the mediations that we are asked to perform. Our point is that neither the mediation skills or the awareness of the benefits of mediation were available to the managers or the HR team at the right time. The consequence of waiting until matters had degenerated so far for both organisations was huge. Staff who were not directly involved in either dispute had left the organisations because of the corrosive atmosphere created by the conflict; both organisations identified a loss of performance in the teams concerned and all of those directly involved showed the signs of the stress of the conflict only too clearly.
It is a statement of the obvious to say that early intervention into conflict makes it easier to resolve and minimizes the financial and non-financial costs to employers and employees alike. Mediation can be a alternative to formal process in employment and workplace disputes but it can also be so much more. By waiting until a solicitor or trades union suggest mediating a dispute, the HR Manager is missing an opportunity to save stress for the individuals and money and time for the organisation. Don’t make mediation an emergency call – make it a part of an ER approach that everyone can take advantage from.
