The CAN Mediation service

What is mediation?

Mediation is a process by which a neutral person assists individuals and/or groups and/or organisations who are in dispute to find a mutually agreed, positive outcome.

What are the benefits?

Minimisation of harm to individuals and organisations by a process which focuses on increasing understanding of the ways in which misunderstandings and conflicts arise and providing a positive process towards sustainable, agreed outcomes and conciliation
The immediate reduction of the risk of increasing conflict, negativity and disruption
The avoidance of human and organisational costs such as ill health, reduced productivity and litigation
Individuals / groups / organisations are able to resume working together harmoniously, even to understand that conflicts can arise among the best of us and it is perfectly possible to gain collective strength, enhanced group identity and inter-personal relationships by overcoming them by a shared process.

How the CAN Mediation Service meets your needs

We have specialists with decades of experience and practical skills development
We operate an internal consultant or “buddy” system so that the Mediator is supported and advised by someone who is not directly influenced by individuals involved
We understand the environment. Co-operatives and Social Enterprises are full of people who are passionate about social mission, good governance and ethical behaviour. Their disagreements tend to be different in nature and level of intensity to those in other environments where money or status are often the predominant issues.
We provide added value. The process of mediation gives us insights which we can filter through our appreciation of issues of corporate development and governance and then translate into additional advice on the development of policies, procedures and practices which make the organisation(s) involved more likely to avoid similar problems in the future and individuals feel assurance that they will not suffer recurrence of their trauma.

How does it work?

The Mediator will explain the process to those involved
They will enable those involved in the dispute to express their positions with clarity and acceptability to other parties
They will check facts and provide the conduit through which all parties are provided with relevant facts and opinions
They will assist all parties to consider the positions of the others and make reasoned responses
They will assist all parties to generate proposals for solutions taking into account the facts and the positions of others
They will assist the parties to generate a set of criteria against which a sustainable solution can be judged
They will facilitate a discussion (possibly but not necessarily face-to-face) to draw upon the proposals to generate a mutually-agreed solution that meets the success criteria.

What does it cost?

There are two simple answers: “our hourly rate” and “a lot less than a court case or the resignation of a key member of your team” but you really want to know how much you should budget and do you have the cash to pay the invoice when it arrives. Of course you will appreciate that it is not like providing a training seminar where we know how many hours of preparation, delivery, travel is involved. As a guide, we have completed this process in as little as eight working hours in the space of a working week (sometimes things go surprisingly well) and sometimes we have struggled to achieve it in forty hours in the space of a month (sometimes things have to get worse before they get better). So that translates to somewhere between £400 and £2400 with a median average of £1000.

We hope that you are lucky. We suggest that you budget on the basis that you will be unlucky and appoint someone to monitor progress and cost (we like to have someone to report to). The worst situation is mediation abandoned half wa

Our Mediation Product Area Team Leader is Chris Funnell: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Doing it for you