10 January 2025 
Emma Walton-Pond, Communications Officer
Some universities are governed by statutes and ordinances that prescribe the processes used for dealing with ER issues. In other words, complaints of all kinds are channelled into formal procedures that don’t often allow for win-win situations. Instead of resolution there can be blame and punishment.
To create a good working culture, it’s critical that universities approach conflict in a positive and constructive way — based on the understanding that everyday disagreements, misunderstandings and clashes in personality are an unavoidable part of working lives. If anything, conflict can be a sign of engagement and commitment, it comes from people standing up for themselves, from being willing to challenge convention, from diversity and new ways of thinking.
In some organisations, conflict is dealt with as quickly as possible, people might be moved to a different department or there’s a financial settlement — which removes one case in the short-term, but does nothing about root causes, insidious behaviours, the reasons for disengagement and there’s always the danger that problems fester and grow.
We have more than 12,000 academic and professional services staff at Manchester and wanted to look at the alternatives and help more people have a positive experience, to feel they were being listened to and supported in their working lives rather than judged. We wanted to establish an in-house mediation service, delivered by a representative team of staff from academic and non-academic areas, by both junior and senior people. Most importantly, we wanted to make mediation the ‘first resort’, a more familiar option for staff at the early stages of a worry or grievance. When mediation is part of the usual way of doing things, of clearing the air and dealing with low-level disagreements, it’s a hugely important tool for building better relationships, trust and confidence.
Mediation is also a complex skill. So, it was critical that the University’s in-house mediation service was made up of mediators who were accredited, who had both the gravitas and the qualifications to mediate successfully. With this in mind, we worked with a professional partner, the workplace relationships specialist CMP for advice in setting up the service and the training of mediators. They didn’t just deliver the training but have maintained a vested interest in the development of the in-house service.
An initial group of 12 staff went through the Professional Workplace Mediator programme, a nationally accredited training programme for mediators. CMP’s approach is based around the value of ‘interactive mediation’: people in conflict need to interact directly with one another in order to restore communication, rebuild relationships and resolve the issues that are in dispute. Employees are invited to say what they need from one another, and really hear one another, rather than say what they think of one another. The quality of interaction from the mediator to the parties is crucial.
It’s a practical, skill-based course, run by experienced practitioners. Each participant gets developmental and motivational coaching around their use of skills and use of the mediation process. There are carefully set-up and assessed role plays and interactive small group exercises. The course is structured so that delegates get the chance to learn core skills and process early on, then move into more detailed work on higher levels of conflict on days three and four, and conclude in the last two days, with the most difficult material including power imbalances and high levels of resistance to the process.
As a consequence of the development of the in-house service at Manchester, there’s already a heightened awareness of the service and confidence in what it delivers. Another group of mediators are being trained. The number of people taking advantage of mediation has tripled this year, and we’re moving towards a situation where mediation is the first resort before those minor grievances can turn into a formal complaint.
Mediation can also be transformational for staff who are trained with the skillset needed as a foundation of their people skills: being able to deal with everyone from junior staff to board level, to have empathy, to manage difficult conversations and situations, deal with feedback, and to be an important part of managing partnerships and collaborations across and between organisations. There’s great satisfaction to be had for mediators in feeling they have been able to help people who were in difficult or damaging situations, looking as if there was no potential for a resolution, and taking away that stress.
Used often enough, so there’s wide exposure and experience, then the mediation approach — its values and principles of benevolence and understanding and support — can be an important pillar of a positive culture throughout a university.
Carol Platts, Head of Employee Relations, University of Manchester.
