More often than not, a dispute can be traced back to some relatively minor misunderstandings, miscommunications, mistaken perceptions, and frustrated expectations that have nothing to do with legal concerns. Left unresolved, these seemingly ordinary events can escalate, positions can solidify and the problem will become a legal matter.

How many mediations uncover failures in the communications involved in the situation rather than a violation of law?

More often than not, a dispute can be traced back to some relatively minor misunderstandings, miscommunications, mistaken perceptions, and frustrated expectations that have nothing to do with legal concerns. Left unresolved, these seemingly ordinary events can escalate, positions can solidify and the problem will become a legal matter.

Mediation of all types of workplace disputes can happen at any stage in the life cycle of the conflict. Intervention via informal mediation by an impartial third party works and can easily be measured as a cost effective tool.

Any a professional mediator and human resources professional, specializing in employee relations, will tell you that human interactions set the nature of the work environment. A positive work environment is critical to productivity, business reputation, customer service excellence and, indeed, the bottom-line operating costs of any organization.

Of course, researchers have reached this conclusion as well. Therefore, business owners, managers at all levels of the organization, human resources leaders and their legal counsel all have reason to want to mitigate an organization's exposure to conflict and disputes impacting a work group's ability to function well.