“Unmanaged conflict is the largest reducible cost in organizations today, and the least recognized.”

A major trend emerging on the international employment scene is the creation of workplaces that are more collaborative and less confrontational, more team-oriented and less hierarchical. Employers and employees alike are realizing the absurdity of dealing with each other as adversaries when they must produce goods or perform services together. Forward-looking companies are investigating management and production systems that emphasize informed participation, decentralized authority and expanded responsibility. Consistent with these goals, they are finding that mediation is the best dispute resolution process.

Mediation of workplace disputes is also useful for companies that have no plans to change the structure or philosophy of their organizations. Employment litigation is enormously costly, in terms of dollars spent, time and energy lost, and relationships destroyed. Mediating disputes as they arise in the workplace can help avoid those costs.

Workplace mediation offers important benefits to employers and employees alike. It provides fast, creative, mutually satisfactory resolutions. When a dispute is mediated shortly after it arises, the chances of optimal resolution are much greater: the parties’ differences have not had a chance to fester, the situation is generally more fluid, and the parties have more resolution options available to them. Mediated resolutions work better and last longer than authoritatively imposed resolutions because everyone involved buys into them. Moreover, mediation fosters mutual respect through improved communication. Mediation can mend and preserve frayed working relationships, even when the parties are extremely angry.