Menzies Law Mediation – open for business!

Menzies Law Mediation Services is now open for business, with Anne-Marie at the helm. 

After recently completing her training as a Workplace Mediator, Anne-Marie is looking forward to working with businesses keen to consider a positive, more cost-effective way of resolving workplace conflicts.

You might enjoy her recent BLOG about her interest in mediation and her reasons for  training as a Workplace Mediator.

Our view is that so many cases that end up in the Employment Tribunals could have been resolved – or at least calmed down – by well-timed workplace mediation.  Mediation will always be quicker and cheaper and usually allows useful and important lessons to be learned by your management colleagues in a way that the adversarial (“we’re right, you’re wrong!”) approach in the Tribunals doesn’t allow.  In Tribunal claims, managers are usually required to stick by their decisions come what may, and doggedly insist that they were right – for fear of the consequences if they waivered.  This is not a good environment for honest reflection and learning.  And the Tribunal system also allows the employee/claimant to remain gloriously in ‘victim mode’, revelling in how awful you’ve been and how upset they are.  Again, really not helpful.

By contrast, workplace mediation is all about moving away from rigid positions of “being right” and “being wronged/harmed”, towards recognising that seldom does righteousness or fault lie entirely at the feet of one person and not the other.  Yes, it does often involve the manager and you as an organisation having to concede a certain amount, and sometimes that can feel hard to do, but we still advocate it as being a better solution in the long-term than going to law.

Please do come and talk to us about any situation where you might be interested in exploring workplace mediation as an option.  We’d love to explore it with you.