Roland Chesters, Policy and Strategic Communications Desk Officer from the FCO Diversity Strategy Unit, has given initial feedback from the project:

“The Foreign and Commonwealth Office was pleased to commission CMP Resolutions to provide training for First Response Officers (FROs).  FROs are volunteers trained as a first contact point, a listening ear and a sign-poster for colleagues who feel that they may have been bullied, harassed or discriminated against, who may have witnessed someone else on the receiving end of that kind of behaviour or may indeed have been accused of being the perpetrator of that behaviour. Seven training sessions are being held between June and September around the world including Dubai, Singapore, Washington; and South Africa.

The first session in Ghana, was recently completed to wide acclaim. The delegates commented how the training was fun, exciting and interesting: “I loved the training! It has been an encouraging two days, I have learnt an awful lot. The trainers are very open and interesting they know the subject matter very well. The participants have been wonderful there was a just lot of experience shared to benefit from. It has been a wonderful experience”.”

Trainee FROs and CMP trainers on the training in Accra, Ghana

Katherine Graham MD at CMP adds “It is a great privilege to be able to support the FCO in this way. Our trainers have thought hard about how to ensure a strong cultural fit for each of the training destinations, as well as making sure the courses are consistent, and enjoyable to attend, so the endorsement of their efforts shown by the feedback from Ghana is really positive.”

The innovative approach at the FCO brings together the First Response Officer with the Dispute Resolution Caseworker to support staff worldwide. Kevin Brant, Employee Relations Advisor, said “Whilst First Response Officers, will do just that, act as a first response mechanism for staff involved in a dispute with colleagues, Dispute Resolution Caseworkers will be able to provide further assistance to staff by offering mediation and grievance investigation services. Working with CMP on both projects has meant a strong continuity between the two projects and a consistency of training delivery and skill development”.

CMP were first approached by Citi in 2006 to embed an internal mediation service within the London branch in response to equality and diversity issues within the organisation. The first cohort of training was positively met by delegates with feedback including: “Really enjoyed the course and enabled a great understanding of mediation in practice; gave me confidence to exhibit my role as a mediator and increased my self-awareness on many levels”, “Constructive feedback from trainers, encouraging and motivating”, “Trainers were excellent, very knowledgeable; I liked their use of previous mediations to make the content more relatable”. CMP look forward to the ongoing relationship with Citi.

The Qualified Workplace Mediator is CMP’s flagship mediation traiing programme endorsed by the ILM, we also run the OCR accredited Certificate in Mediation Skills which can be tailored to non-workplace mediation schemes, such as homelessness prevention. For further information, please contact us.

To view our extensive list of private sector and international clients, please click here.

CMP will draw elements from the unique Introducing Mediation^© holistic package to deliver mediation briefings to employees, provide core skills mediation training to managers, and ongoing consultancy and organisational support to underpin CMP’s independent mediation service.

To find out how you can introduce mediation into your organisation, or for further details on any of our stand alone provisions, please contact Deborah Casey on 0844 504 8874.

It is exactly at times like these that workplace conflict can creep in and when the cost benefits of early dispute resolution are so vital, measurable and clearly identifiable. Your dispute resolution team may now encounter more complex, entrenched and /or muti-party mediations and you need to ensure they are adequately skilled to enable informal early resolution, the most cost effective outcome for any dispute and any organisation.

CMP can help, we offer the widest variety of dispute resolution skills courses ranging from our popular Conflict Management for Managers course,  the Qualified Workplace Mediator, Mediation Refreshers and The Mediation Supervisor or Co-ordinator to the newly unveiled range of Advanced Mediation courses for further development and dealing with specialist areas. We also run the Qualified Workplace Investigator and Investigation refreshers and upgrades for those looking to refresh and/or formalise previous investigation training.

Download our full public course list July 2010 – December 2011

The cost of conflict can be huge; ensure your organisation has or keeps the skills on board to deal with it and ensure ongoing employee engagement – it’s a proven return on investment and you’ve never needed it more.

For course programmes and to book online see our public courses pages or contact Deborah Casey on 0844 504 8874.

With 1,200 employees across the three UK branches, Bayer have worked closely with CMP to develop a tailored sole-provider call-off contract that involves the provision of professional independent mediation services with a dedicated practitioner team;ongoing consultancy and organisational support; and a unique 360 return on investment report using CMP’s Cost of Conflict analytic. The project will be launched within Bayer through CMP hosted webinars providing hints and tips on early resolution techniques for managers and employees.

To receive further information about how your organisation can free up your managers and HR time to increase employee engagement through outsourcing your dispute resolution service needs, please contact Deborah Casey on 0844 504 8874.

Our further congratulations go to the internal mediation team who all received certificates following their nomination for a Permanent Secretary’s Award.

CMP were selected by BIS through an open tender process to embed the internal mediation service; we are delighted to continue our working relationship with the government department responsible for implementing the 2009 dispute resolution initiatives.

So workplaces are still racist? Big surprise?!! ‘Blatant racism is still far too prevalent in the workplace. While only a minority has suffered it, for those who have, the pattern of behaviour can be highly offensive and at worst seems unchanged from the 1970s.’

Business in the Community’s challenging and inspiring report ‘Aspiration and Frustration’ opens with a reminder how resistant racism is to change, and how it reduces engagement and fragments identity and commitment at work.

Outwardly the world of work has changed enormously since the 70’s but it is in the internal life of every one of us that racism persists, and it is a difficult habit to lose. In my early years (the 50’s and 60’s) savagely routine jokes about black people, images of colonial life in comics and text books were commonplace. Black people were not. There was no opportunity to experience black people for real, even in North London, so my stereotypes and the messages that go with them were grounded in ignorance and assumptions that had become part of the ‘we’re Great Britain’ way of life. ‘I’m white so I’m right’ was the norm in my normal working class family.

It is almost impossible to shake off completely the inner reflex responses that accompany such routine ignorance – I still get a strong impulse to cross the road if I see a group of young black males on the street, inwardly flinch at the street language I don’t get, or massive overcompensate and get a strong urge to befriend any black person I see who appears to be new in town, or on their own. I’ve deconstructed my white guilt, my responses are becoming more measured and more congruent. How are you around racism at work?

My life and work has given me the opportunity to build my knowledge and understanding of people different to me. My ignorance is reducing, and as it does reflex responses have moderated to enable me to see the person not the race. As a mediator I encourage people to talk about racism, what it means to experience it, what’s it’s like to be accused of it. We’ve got a lot of work to do to build non-racist workplaces. It’s in this dialogue that our hopes at work lie. Too often we are fearful of exchanging perspectives on racism. I am racist, but I’m working on it. Let me know what you think?

I have for many years been a lone voice in the workplace mediation world in advocating the use of mandatory mediation. Recently, at the Civil Mediation Council Workplace Committee meeting, I had a brief exchange about whether mediation ought to be mandatory, and discovered a kindred spirit in Paul Randolf, chair of Lamb Building ADR. While he comes to his conclusion from a different perspective, I am pleased that there are others in the mediation community who are giving this issue serious thought. I raised some eyebrows when I spoke at an IRS conference on employment law last year about the matter, as there has long been an assumption that mediation ought to be voluntary and that anything else is undermining the values of mediation and somehow almost violating people’s human rights…

The emotions described in Paul’s article http://www.newlawjournal.co.uk/nlj/content/litigation-v-mediation are the very reason why mediation ought to mandatory. When we are in a conflict as a result of our emotional state of mind we are not in the best frame of mind to make wise judgements for ourselves and will too often choose the path with the poorer outcome – litigation or formal action. In a real sense, when we are in a conflict we are our own worst enemy. To not make mediation mandatory is to collude with someone who has an illness which is treatable, but whose very symptoms include a passionate rejection of the cure they are being advised to take.

The numbers makes sense, too.

Let us say there are 1000 disputing parties at work in UKplc who are, variously, off with stress, underperforming, taking up HR and managerial time, making poor work decisions because they are avoiding the ‘enemy’ with whom they need to consult. Colleagues are fed up with the situation but feel powerless to intervene and the rumour mill is distracting everyone from getting on with what they are paid to do. HR is bracing itself for a formal complaint, or simply wishing one would arrive on their desks so at least they can get moving on sorting this out. Let us say (rather optimistically) that HR manage to persuade 10 per cent of these people to try mediation “voluntarily”. Of these, 9 mediations end in agreement (a 90% ’success’ rate). UKplc now has ninety people who as a result of mediation feel able to go back to fully productive lives at work, ten people who still have a conflict despite a mediation, but are perhaps clearer about what they need to do to resolve the matter, but 900 parties still in dispute and under performing. What is to be done with them? Very little, if they don’t make a formal complaint that can bring an end to the matter, albeit a win-lose end.

So UKplc does the right thing and introduces mandatory mediation – by which I mean that it makes clear employees are expected and required to attempt to resolve their conflicts through mediation in the first instance. It takes away none of their rights, they are not obliged to reach agreement, they are not obliged to even actively engage. What they are obliged to do is initially meet a mediator privately and take part in a joint meeting which they may or may not wish to engage in fully, it doesn’t matter. Let us say that this approach reduces “success” levels by a whopping 50 per cent. (I don’t believe it would be this low, as resistance to mediation is simply a “position”, and like all positions can be explored and ‘overcome’ and a new way of meeting that person’s needs arrived at.)

So 1000 disputing parties take part in mediation, and only 45 per cent reach agreement. This represents 450 people who can go back to productive working, innumerable teams who breath a collective sigh of relief that it’s all sorted out, HR staff who can move on to other matters – the collateral from a successful mediation is extensive. The number of people who now have a dispute in UKplc has gone down by over 60% from 900 to 550.  Surely this is a positive outcome? I’d be very interested in hearing other people’s views.

NHS Grampian have taken an extremely pro-active approach to handling conflict in the workplace with the help of CMP. Their case study is available for download.

A benchmark for a holistic approach to conflict at work