We can mediate with your employer or your colleaguesIf you don’t want to leave your job or go to a tribunal without first seeing if some sort of agreement can be found, then mediation is well worth considering. Mediation is not the same as arbitration in that you are not bound by a decision – in mediation a neutral body (which can be this Institute) helps the two (or more) sides of a dispute investigate avenues down which they might reach common ground. It is usual for the employer to pay the costs of mediation because, often, it successfully avoids the much more expensive costs involved in a tribunal or court case. Occasionally, though, the employee pays – sometimes as part of a group. Whichever it is, the mediator remains entirely neutral. We see each party in the dispute separately and you can refuse to be in the same room as someone with whom you have a complaint. Indeed, some stages of mediation about job-stress can be undertaken without you attending at all, although we would normally advocate you meet your employers (though not necessarily the person against whom you are making a complaint) towards the final stages of the procedure. Of course all this will be discussed with you long beforehand. If you and your colleagues or employer do not reach an agreement, then you can still consider a tribunal, court or, where you believe there may be breaches in the law, making a formal complaint to your local authority or the Health & Safety Executive. Where associates of this Institute have advised you on, or given, clinical consultations, there are clear practical advantages in our being the mediator as this will save arranging separately for a mediator and the clinical evidence or opinion. But if your case does not include job-stress as an element in your case, then it will be more appropriate for us to review your situation and then suggest another arbitrator – for example a professional arbitrator or ACAS which receives government funding and offers a free service where there is a complaint about employment rights that could go to a tribunal.
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IndividualsWhat happens at your first session?
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The Institute of Clinical Eurgology. | |
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