What does it cost to train a new person to replace one who has quit over an unresolved conflict? OR – Think of the costs associated with an employee lawsuit – even one that the company wins. The money saved from even one case that didn’t go to court can cover many times over the cost of providing mediation in the workplace.
Internal mediators are persons already employed by your organization who take training to become mediators. They apply their mediation skills and process to help others in the organization with their conflicts. It takes only 5 training days to produce a team of competent mediators (appropriate in an organization of roughly 1,000 or more).
The Training
The training process begins at least 4 weeks before the training is actually conducted. Meetings are held with your organization’s officials to customize the training to meet the organization’s needs.
The first two training days are devoted to teaching your new mediators about their role and how to perform it well. In the last three days of the training, they are placed in role-play groups and given scenarios that come directly from your organization’s interpersonal conflict experience. By using training materials that are based on real conflicts from your organization, two important things happen:
1) Trainees experience the training as directly relevant to them. They can learn in a setting that interests and challenges them more than some off-the-shelf product could;
2) The leap from training scenarios to real conflicts with real people is a much smaller one. Many of the real situations they will face, and much of the real dialogue they will hear, has already been dealt with during the training. Real cases seem familiar, and your mediators can be more effective.
Each role-play group proceeds under the watchful eye of an experienced mediator on the training team. These mediators are drawn from community, workplace, government and commercial settings where they have years of mediation experience. They are experts at catching the points in the role-play where the mediator can make a difference and they stop the action to show the trainees the possibilities. The training experience is far richer because these real-life mediators are there to help.
The Benefits of Internal Mediators
- They know what is possible in the organization
- They know where to turn for inside help
- They know enough to question an unworkable conflict resolution proposal
Even more:
- The presence of an internal conflict resolution team composed of trained mediators demonstrates the organization’s commitment to interpersonal problem solving
- The team members become natural ambassadors throughout the organization encouraging colleagues to try a mediation approach
- Conflicts will begin to flow down the mediation path instead of toward adversarial processes that tend to destroy organizations
For a look at UCSF’s satisfaction with the team mediation training and their Mediation Program, see the UCSF Client Statement.
For a look at a mediation team working to assist its volunteer members inside a large organization, see The Sierra Club