Workplace
Mediation

The claimant was a Surgeon, Doctor. For years he had worked for his employer under an old contract. Which had not been updated to the new contract. The new contract paid much more than the old one. He of course disputed this, to no avail.

Always being told, it was in hand and would be rectified. The dispute went on for over ten years. Enough was enough and he started court proceedings for his unpaid wages. A claim of £154,000 was brought. The mediation took less than eight hours and an agreement was reached.

Read the testimonial here.

This concerned a long-standing dispute between a very senior member of staff and one of their managers. Several changes were made to the structure of the business. This led to a number of issues.

Lack of trust, suspicion and alleged ineffective communication were all key drivers which were driving the dispute, alongside some underlying issues. The mediation took less than six hours and an agreement was reached.

Read the testimonial here. 

This workplace mediation was for a national housing provider. At one of their Nottingham branches a number of problems had started to occur and fester between a director and one of his senior managers.

The director had inherited the senior manager from his predecessor. The senior manager should never had been promoted to their position. They were unable to perform at the level they had been promoted to. In terms of knowledge, leadership, skills and experience.

This of course had a knock on, domino effect on the managers team. Impacting other areas of the business, and indeed its profitability. The dispute, issues had been going on for nearly two years. The mediation lasted just over seven hours, and an agreement was reached.

Read the testimonial here.

Two employees, had been working together for over a year. Their working relationship became strained due to repeated miscommunication, unmet deadlines, and mutual frustration.

It was felt that the other did not provide clear project briefs, leading to last-minute revisions. Whereby he alleged she, on the other hand, was uncooperative and slow in delivery. Their disagreements began to affect team morale, with colleagues noticing increased tension during meetings.

As their conflict escalated, they stopped communicating directly, relying on emails and third-party messages to coordinate work. This led to more delays and misunderstandings, frustrating both employees further.

The situation reached a point where a formal complaint about the other’s communication style was raised. The work mediation took six hours, leading to a solution.

This dispute concerned two senior managers A & B, where A reported to B. Issues stemmed from a probationary review and annual performance appraisal.  Both employees had their laptops at the meeting so that both could review the probationary review template that had been prepared with input & review from another senior manager.

Alongside A’s pre-completed appraisal form with the senior managers comments.  B said that he would talk A through both documents at the meeting, beginning with the probationary review. In relation to the probationary review, B had already communicated to A, following discussions with another senior manager.

That it had been decided to confirm her in post in her substantive role, and that there was a process for this that involved completion of a template and scoring against a range of criteria. B repeated this as he introduced the template in their previous meeting. B had communicated in advance about the intention to confirm in post as he hoped this would help to defuse the defensiveness that he had sometimes encountered with A when trying to discuss important issues pertaining to the management of people reporting to her. B wanted there to be a constructive and forward looking discussion.

In relation to the appraisal  interview that followed, B did not communicate any final rating of A prior to the meeting. B inserted some comments alongside individual objectives to indicate where he thought those objectives had been exceeded, met, or partly met. His plan was to go through these individual ratings and comments with A and then to draw his conclusions about her rating at the end of the appraisal interview in the light of their discussion.

It proved to be a very difficult meeting, despite B’s hopes to the contrary. A became aggressive when they touched on issues of concern or constructive criticism in what B felt was an appropriate and proportionate manner. There was no aggressive body language or shouting but A’s voice was often raised, she interrupted B frequently and at times she fired the same question at him repeatedly rather than accepting his responses to her questions and moving forward. 

A’s behaviour was completely inappropriate and very concerning, particularly in the probationary review, although she was extremely argumentative in both parts of the meeting. All of her scores in the probationary review were in the 3-4 bracket except for two, where B had scored her 2.5 because of concerns about her management of people reporting to her. B was hoping to be able to have a constructive discussion about this.

A challenged a number of different scores, even those in the 3-3.5 bracket. This was to be expected, a probationary review or an appraisal is, and should be, a two-way discussion where some disagreement is natural and indeed healthy. But with the two 2.5 scores that B included, A was adamant that these should not stand and tried to bully B into changing one of them by threatening B.

Specifically, she said that either we could agree to amend the template and one particular score in the meeting from a 2.5 to at least a 3 or she would lodge a grievance against B. She also said, again with an element of threat, that she could not see how I would be able to return as her manager when B’s secondment came to an end, and she would need to raise this with B’s manager.

Thereafter communication between the two was difficult to say the least. Whereby mediation was suggested. The mediation took place in person, lasted eight hours and an agreement was reached.

A workplace mediation between three employees. One alleged the other was dismissive and a know it all, who was abrupt and not willing to share his knowledge surrounding certain systems. Being quite unapproachable and difficult to work alongside.

He alleged that she, although was extremely hard working, she needed to work smarter, rather than harder. As he had shown her a number of times, how certain systems worked, and she just did not get it.

In the mix was their manager who had inherited this problem from a previous manager. Who was being dragged into the dispute, and being asked to take sides.The mediation took seven hours, and led to an agreement.

Following the resignation of a director, it was agreed that another employee would take on his duties, in return for an increase in his salary. Having undertaken these duties, the increase in salary did not happen. Subsequently the business was taken over by another company. This led to changes and a number of redundancies and retirement of key individuals.

The salary increase was promised by a director who had now moved on. So, when the takeover went through, there was not any real proof that this discussion, promise even took place. Although the employee claimed he had taken on all these extra duties, in reality that was not the case. And the some of the extra duties he did take on, were not undertaken as they should have been.

Due to the ongoing dispute the employee found himself in financial hardship due to the original and ongoing promises from his employer. He alleged he had endured these promises and continued to deliver his extra duties whilst his mental health deteriorated by the strain of the promise of additional income and the financial strain that this had caused.

To complicate matters the employee had put in a grievance, which was not upheld, which he appealed, again the appeal was not successful. He then claimed a substantial sum of money from the new employer. The mediation took place in person, and settled within one day. Read the testimonial here.

This dispute concerned a workplace dispute concerning a school teacher and the senior leadership team. The school was based just outside of EU. A number of incidents led to a situation between the teacher and the SLT team.

The mediator conducted this dispute in person, and flew out to conduct it. Due to the nature of the dispute, and number of participants, the mediation took place over the course of one week. A solution was eventually found, which served all of the employee’s interests.

Being Updated

Read the testimonial here.

Being Updated

Read the testimonial here.