Workplace Mediation Course
PATHFINDER HOUSE
Workplace Mediation Course
By completing our workplace mediation course you will be equipped to transfer your newly acquired knowledge and skills in mediation to the workplace with the additional benefit of your pre-existing life and work experience. The course can therefore enhance your employability and provide a potential gateway to a fulfilling and lucrative career or significant professional development in your existing work. The course provides an extra dimension to your training and experience which could well be of much attraction to employers and/or clients. Any undertaking concerned with reducing internal conflicts within its workforce it’s likely to find someone with such training as our course provides of significant value to the organisation.
Our workplace mediation course will not only make you more aware of how workplace disputes arise and exist within the overall procedural and legal context but also how they can be effectively addressed by getting to the parties’ real needs and concerns. This is largely what adds value when mediating workplace disputes.
My own awareness of and interest in dispute resolution stems originally from practising as a solicitor. Having had conduct of clients’ employment law and personal injury cases it used to surprise me how reluctant each party would typically be to reach out to investigate the possibility of settling the matter before it escalated in an adversarial way to actual legal proceedings and sometimes indeed to a trail in a court of tribunal with all the corresponding adversity, cost and not least stress. A typical viewpoint seemed to be that making contact first with the other side was somehow a ‘sign of weakness’.
The absurdity of that however is in the fact that listening is not agreeing. Speaking to ‘the other side’ does not committing either party to anything. Indeed speaking to each other enables not only a better mutual understanding of each party’s position but also of their particular needs and concerns. Indeed not speaking to each other before getting embroiled in legal proceedings is likely to lead to each party not in fact being permitted to say much of what they want to say due to strict rules of evidence disallowing such as being immaterial to the legal issues.
So talking well before things get to that stage can enable everyone to express feelings, explore settlement possibilities and craft creative settlement solutions which indeed a court or tribunal may well not even have the authority to provide. All in a safe environment in the course of mediation. Mediation is a confidential process, so except in very specific and unusual situations (eg knowledge of impending risk to someone’s personal safety becoming evident) everything said in mediation remains confidential unless all parties involved consent to something said being disclosed.
Mediation also enables the parties to retain more control of both the process and outcome. Courts and tribunal trials are at the opposite end of that spectrum. I.e. With mediation you have the control over whether to settle at all and if so to agree on what terms. In this way a win-win outcome may be achievable so avoiding a judicially imposed win-lose outcome. While that can provide a degree of finality to the matter even then the so-called winner may have been denied more commercially and/or personally fruitful terms of resolution.
Indeed courts and tribunals are increasingly recognising and encouraging mediation generally, not least due to the foregoing. So the mediation process is likely to become much more prevalent as a growing industry. (As confirmed not least by a recent and highly influential Court of Appeal decision in the case of J. Churchill v Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council).
William (Billy) Robert McKay
More about the Course Content?
F.A.Q.
Find answers to commonly asked questions about our Mediation Practice course.
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Is the course in person or online?
We will be running some in person courses as well as regular online courses throughout the year. For online courses please contact us for details of course dates. Similarly for dates of in person courses please contact us for further details.
What does the course cost?
The course fee is £1,250. If however you are uncertain whether to commit to that at this stage then please note that we also offer a half day introduction to workplace mediation ‘taster’ course for £300.
Is the course accredited?
Who is the course for?
People from a range of work backgrounds can benefit from the course. The course is particularly conducive to anyone with pre-existing experience in the workplace, ideally in some professional or other responsible role.
Those wishing to focus on professional areas of dispute resolution and/or negotiation in fields such as management, HR, union and employee representation, independent consultancy and within a whole range of other professional fields can enhance their skills set and employability with this course.
How will I be assessed on the course?
How could the course assist me with employability and career development?
The course is run and delivered by professional trainers, which will give credibility to the training you receive. As you will learn further during the course, dispute resolution is becoming an increasingly major ‘industry’ and feature of the workplace environment. Successful completion of our course you will be equipped to transfer your newly acquired knowledge and skills in mediation to the workplace with the additional benefit of your pre-existing life and work experience.
The course can therefore enhance your employability and provide a potential gateway to a fulfilling and lucrative career or significant professional development in your existing work. The course provides an extra dimension to your training and experience which could well be of much attraction to employers and/or clients. Any undertaking concerned with reducing internal conflicts within its workforce it’s likely to find someone with such training as our course provides of significant value to the organisation.
