Let me tell you right away what that mistake is and then I’ll tell you how to avoid it. The most expensive mediation mistake is behaving like an ostrich! By this I mean putting your head in the sand and hoping things will go away – well, I can tell you now, they won’t! The cost of workplace conflict to UK employers is estimated at £24billion per year – a high price to pay. Did you know that 77% of all disputes at work are because of relationship problems, usually between managers and employees? Consider how much time you spend at work. It’s not surprising that most people encounter a problem with a colleague or manager at some point and you can’t change that.
But, here’s what you can change:
- You can resolve conflict, disputes and grievances before they escalate and start to affect the rest of the organisation.
- You can keep yourself out of an employment tribunal.
- You can significantly reduce the amount of stress or depression related sickness absence and save yourself thousands of pounds of lost labour hours.
- You can reduce your staff turnover and save on the huge cost of recruiting and training new employees. 50% of conflict results in an employee leaving the company.
- You can put an end to wasted management and HR time – on average 9 days per grievance are wasted.
- You can smooth the way forward after disciplinary action – after all people still need to work together.
- You can turn around a “tit for tat”, “blame” or “them & us” culture.
- You can stop your employees leaving work in tears.
- You can introduce a mature way of dealing with conflict.
- You can create a workplace which is a happy, creative and productive place to be.
Here’s how do you do all this – it’s simple, use mediation to resolve conflict. What are you waiting for?
