Employment & Workplace Mediation

James Hazel

Employment & Workplace Mediator

As a lawyer, a business owner, a leader, an author, a father, and a mediator, I am passionate about conflict resolution.

With over twenty years’ experience in the legal industry I have a wealth of knowledge in civil, commercial and employment dispute resolution across a wide range of sectors and disciplines. In 2015, I left mainstream legal practice to become a strategic legal consultant with In-House where I specialise in handling complex business relations challenges.

At In-House, we don’t follow the herd. We take a forward-thinking, dynamic approach to legal problem solving that focuses on critical and out-of-the-box thinking.

The biggest mistake I see people making in their approach to conflict resolution is waiting for the other side to change their minds. People are capable of change, but rarely when they’re being bombarded with hostility. Usually, people under fire buckle down even more, and whether they’re wrong or right about their assessment of merits has little to do with it.

Instead, people need to be invited to change, not coerced. That means, firstly, creating a safe environment where interests and needs (as opposed to wants) can be discussed and people can start listening to each other; that is the best way to achieve a change in perspective.

Trust – Dialogue – Legitimacy

Solicitor qualified in 2008
CEDR accredited mediator since 2021
CMC associate mediator 2025
Former equity partner of regional law firm
Former head of dispute resolution, employment and corporate teams
Internationally published author
Strategic legal consultant for local, regional and national businesses across a huge range of sectors and industries

The cost of workplace conflict is rising dangerously. According to a 2015 CIPD report, 4 out of every 10 employees in the UK has experienced some form of interpersonal conflict in the past 12 months. According to recent ONS data, the UK has one of the lowest productivity levels in the G7

"Unresolved conflict costs the UK economy a staggering £33 billion a year according to CEDR/CBI"

Suppressed conflicts are damaging and destructive to business. Workplace mediation is a process in which workers and employers are assisted to resolve a dispute by a trained, neutral, third-party mediator in a confidential, safe and voluntary environment with a focus on pragmatism, flexibility and creativity.

Workplace Mediation

Workplace mediation covers a range of challenges within a workforce. The focus could be on a team, a small number of team members, or a single employee. Workplace mediation is suitable for any form of conflict that needs resolving. This could be:

An allegation of bullying and harassment
A disgruntled employee
A personality clash
Disciplinary proceedings
A grievance
A dispute between two employees, or even an employee and a third party such as a customer or supplier
Discussions over a settlement agreement

At In-House, we believe that all forms of conflict, whether functional or dysfunctional, are capable of resolution by mediation, but the form and content of each mediation must be bespoke to the nature of the problem. Our approach is to assess each conflict holistically by way of a resolution triage which aims to design and manage a roadmap to a successful conclusion. This could be by way of traditional mediation, facilitative discussions, investigation work, protected conversations, early neutral evaluation or something else entirely.

Our focus is on creativity and compassion blended with pragmatism.

Employment Mediation

Employment mediation generally takes place against the background of live or anticipated employment tribunal proceedings. Mediation is engrained into the psyche of every civil and commercial litigator. It’s woven into the fabric of the Civil Procedure Rules – the rules that govern the conduct of litigation in England and Wales. It’s embedded in the civil litigator’s DNA. That is not necessarily the case for employment lawyers. We are trying to change that.

Mediation has huge benefits for both employers and employees:

Employee Advantages

Employer Advantages

Advantages for Both

Confidentiality: mediations lead to settlement agreements, which usually include an NDA.

Outcomes: employment tribunals focus on wins and losses. In mediation, an employer might be more interested in negotiating other things such as restrictive covenants, undertakings, NDAs, return of goods and data, counter-claims, and settlement agreements.

An holistic approach: the employer is always a party to a workplace conflict, but conflicts rarely only involve two people. Mediation is an opportunity to explore a problem from different angles, involving different people and teams, from everyone's perspective.

Remedy: remedies in employment tribunal proceedings are limited, generally to compensation . Other outcomes such as apologies, references, HR files altered, exit interviews, training, removal of restrictive covenants etc are not available from tribunals but can be agreed in mediation.

Being Heard: being heard is often a key goal of employees with a grievance. Mediation is the chance to talk to your employer, to tell them how you feel, in a conversation facilitated by the mediator.

Resources: A good mediator is impartial, non-adversarial and non-judgmental and will make allowances and adaptations to processes for employees who are unrepresented, especially when facing an imbalance of resources against an employer who is lawyered up.

A Safe Space: the employment relationship is inherently one-sided, and the balance of power often rests with the employer. Mediations offer the opportunity to discuss problems openly and honesty in a safe environment.

Speed: Employment tribunal proceedings can take months even years to come to trial. Mediations can be arranged in days.

Costs: Mediation is cheap compared to the eye-watering costs of litigation.

Risk: Nobody has a 100% chance of a winning a case. No matter how you see the case, what’s important is how the judge sees it but with so many factors outside of the parties’ control such as witness performance, Judge attitude, legal representative preparation, mediation removes the risk of litigation.

Avoiding the Courtroom: All courts, including tribunals, are intimidating, unforgiving environments. Giving evidence is stressful. Fighting, arguing and battling are draining. Court’s focus on the past, mediations focus on the future.

Rip up your Grievance Procedure

At the heart of so many employment relations disputes is the grievance policy, the procedure that casts the employee as the disgruntled victim, and the employer as either the cruel antagonist or the weary parent of two feuding children.

Grievances can be destructive, vexatious, entirely valid or down-right confusing. They are often met with counter-grievances, or utilised strategically as part of performance or disciplinary proceedings. The alternative is a Resolution Policy. This places mediation, facilitation and cooperation at the heart of conflict resolution in the workplace.

Employment Training

A recent CMI study showed that ‘accidental mangers’ (i.e. manager’s without proper leadership training – around 82% of mangers on average) contribute to almost one in three workers walking out.

Our team provide bespoke training for businesses and operations of all sizes in areas such as:

Carrying out investigations
Conflict Resolution
Employment law basics for managers
Equality Act 2010

Our sessions are designed to be engaging and informative with minimal use of power-points and a focus on collaborative learning.