Busting mediation myths for HR

Busted: the "aaful" but mythical Lambton Worm

Managing employment relations can be an endless - and often thankless - task. By the time HR gets involved in many cases, relationships have deteriorated badly, negative feelings have hardened into certainties, battle-lines have been drawn up. Rigid internal procedures often make the situation worse.

It’s well known that mediation has a remarkable track record of resolving difficult disputes early, without the costs and risks of protracted internal and external battles. However, many organisations have been slow to adopt it due mainly to a combination of myths, such as:

• Offering mediation would admit weakness.

Offering mediation admits nothing. It merely confirms a willingness to listen and to consider resolving the issue by agreement, if the other part(ies) are also willing to listen to you. Being willing to enter into a mediated conversation is a sign of confidence, rather than weakness.

• Mediation would undermine the existing procedural routes.

Those formal routes remain firmly in place. Mediation is a voluntary alternative. Settling issues without recourse to formal mechanisms should, in any event, be built into any sensible set of employment procedures.

• Mediating internal disputes would take up too much time and resources.

A successful mediation, particularly at an early stage, saves huge amounts of time and money.

• Mediation would mean losing management authority.

On the contrary, mediation can avoid disputes being determined by external bodies such as Courts and Tribunals – or being settled late, only after substantial legal costs and internal costs and damage have been incurred.

• Mediation is only suitable for relationship issues between individuals.

Although extremely useful for dealing relationship issues between employees, mediation is equally effective as a way of resolving employer/employee (or multi-party) disputes.

I’m not suggesting that HR should bring in an external mediator every time someone treads on a colleague’s toes or disagrees with a performance assessment. I’m suggesting a more graduated approach. In the next blog post, we’ll look at those suggestions.