As we hear news about more redundancies and impending economic doom Human Resource Professonals now face the prospect of dealing with more disciplinary hearings and grievances etc.
Not necessarily a pleasant place to be.
Against such a background what will be interesting if some HR professionals will start applying more flair in the grievance and disciplinary process and seeking to use mediation where it is important that the employee relationship can be retained.
My experience of HR professionals is they do not use mediation and many have no interest in knowing.
However the benefits of using mediation at an early stage include:
- Enabling the parties to consider a process that may not necessarily occurred to them
- Involving a neutral third party through the mediation process trained to
work with parties to facilitate communication that is geared towards an
agreed and lasting settlement - Changing the focus for the parties away from past towards potential
solutions and the needs of the future - Keeping and/or moving the negotiation out of the public arena through the
mediation process - Providing savings in legal and management costs
- Achieving a binding solution - over 70 per cent of mediations reach a solution
Theese issues are explored further in my firm's free Guide to keeping disputes out of Court.
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