Schools across our nation have been using conflict resolution and peer mediation programs for close to twenty years to address and resolve disputes in classes, hallways, cafeterias, on school buses and in playgrounds. Managing conflict effectively has helped to create thousands of safe and caring school environments. The training of faculty, administrators, counselors, deans, parents, and students has empowered individuals to use creative problem-solving techniques to reach win-win solutions to everyday disputes.

Conflict resolution education and negotiation skills training have recognized that whenever disputants in a relationship or interaction do not share common values, objectives and interests, conflict is likely to occur. School peer mediation centers have channeled conflicts into positive directions. However, the corporate workplace has been rather slow to adopt this approach to resolving conflicts. Disputes among workers, with consumers, governmental agencies, and other organizations have usually resulted in time-consuming and costly litigation. Conflict management systems in the workplace can channel conflict in productive directions and lead to unique outcomes.

The Association for Conflict Resolution (ACR), an organization that, in 2001, merged from the Society for Professionals in Dispute Resolution, the Academy for Family Mediation and the Conflict Resolution Education Network presented five essential characteristics of an integrated conflict management system (Gosline, 2001).

• Scope: A system should have the widest feasible scope, providing options for all individuals in the workplace, employees, supervisors, professionals, and managers to have all kinds of problems considered.
• Culture: A system should welcome and/or tolerate disagreement or dissent and encourage resolution of conflict through direct negotiation.
• Multiple access points: A system should enable individuals to identify and have access to the person, department or entity most capable of advising them about the conflict management system and managing the problem in question.
• Multiple options: A system must allow users the choice of more than one option for resolving a dispute or problem and encourage people to address these issues early and constructively.
• Support structures: A system requires support structures that are capable of coordinating and managing the multiple access point and multiple options. Successful systems develop this support through its infrastructure.

At the school level, counselors, deans, trained teachers and student peer mediators have traditionally handled conflict management. The responsibility for managing employees in an organization, when not supervised by middle-line managers, has been the bailiwick of the personnel department or the human resources management. The rise of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) at the workplace has followed the lead that has been occurring in the United States system of justice where arbitration, negotiation, and mediation have been utilized as a result of widespread dissatisfaction with long delays and excessive costs associated with litigation. Corporate America has utilized ADR to resolve disputes focused on: commercial contracts, consumer rights, intellectual property, real estate, construction, corporate finance, environmental issues and product liability. However, industry has recently used the following ADR techniques with its employees:

1. Mediation
2. Mediation/arbitration
3. Ombudsperson
4. Department/peer facilitation
5. Peer review committee
6. In-house grievance procedure

If there is one message that employers should heed, it would be to do all they can to resolve work place disputes as early as possible. There are few, if any, employers who would argue against staying out of court. Legal fees, bad feelings and the unpredictability of the outcome make litigation a risky business for everyone involved. There is a clear need for organizations to incorporate programs to resolve workplace disputes. ADR can address workplace complaints and conflicts, often to a final and binding conclusion.

Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is a generic term that describes various methods of resolving work place conflicts rather than going to court. ADR covers an extensive range of problem-solving processes that resolve conflicts more quickly and less expensively. It is a group of processes or techniques that provide alternative ways to resolve disputes. The thing that all ADR processes have in common is that each uses a neutral person or persons, who are not associated with the problem to help the parties resolve the dispute.

• Reduction of attorneys fees and related costs of dispute settlement;
• Rapid resolution of a dispute that minimizes lost employee hours and productivity resulting from unresolved tensions and open conflicts;
• Early intervention and possible resolution of disputes that promotes a true reconciliation of various interests and needs of parties;
• Relationships may be salvaged which would otherwise be fractured or destroyed forever in litigation;
• There are no winners or losers as in an adversarial process -- the ADR process fosters cooperative problem-resolution that encourages the preservation of working relationships;
• ADR provides the "opportunity to be heard" to disputants in a home-grown, low-cost, less rigid system; and
• It preserves confidentiality and usually results in more durable resolutions.

Designing the best conflict management system for the workplace requires that both substantive and procedural decisions need to be made. The design process (Lipsky, Seeber and Fincher, 2003) should determine:

• What stakeholders are eligible to participate in the system;
• The range and scope of disputes that can be brought into it;
• The options available to people to resolve their disputes;
• The specific rules governing the use of those options;
• Voluntary nature of ADR;
• The protection of privacy and confidentiality;
• The impartiality, training and qualification of the neutrals;
• Protection of collective bargaining rights;
• Prohibition of retaliation; and
• Preclusion of statutory rights.

Designing ADR for the educational systems has basically involved training adults and kids to establish and operate a mediation facility. The design and implementation of an analogous system in the workplace would be the peer review panel.

Many employers have established voluntary, internal peer review systems in which a panel composed of a number of employees and a slightly smaller number of management representatives convenes and decides workplace disputes. The cost advantage is clear: everyone is on the payroll already, and the time lost from work is usually comparable to or less than that which would be required for any other form of dispute settlement.

Properly designed and implemented, peer review can be an effective and popular ADR technique. Peer review is a problem-solving process where an employee takes a dispute to a group or panel of fellow employees and managers for a decision. The decision may or may not be binding on the employee and/or the employer, depending on the conditions of the particular process. If it is not binding on the employee, he or she would be able to seek relief in traditional forums for dispute resolution if dissatisfied with the decision under peer review. The principle objective of the method is to resolve disputes early before they become formal complaints or grievances.

Peer review panels may be standing groups of individuals who are available to address whatever disputes employees might bring to the panel at any given time. Other panels may be formed on an ad hoc basis through some selection process initiated by the employee, e.g., blind selection of a certain number of names from a pool of qualified employees and managers. One initial concern many organizations have about peer review is management`s distrust and skepticism. While they fear that employees will give away the store, managers are often relieved to find their concerns unfounded. By giving up a little bit of authority, you can generate an enormous amount of support because peer review validates the employees` perception of a fair and impartial process.

Peer review also increases supervisor effectiveness by forcing supervisors to pay more attention to the rules. With an effective check and balance system they have to pay attention, and they have to sit down and listen to employees. Peer review panels produce quick, efficient, and inexpensive results. Usually, only a few weeks pass from the time a problem arises until it is resolved. There are no complicated rules, no courtroom trappings, and no lawyers. Panel meetings are businesslike and take at most a few hours. Salaries and travel costs, if any, are the only expenses.

Peer review`s biggest benefit may turn out to be its ability to keep problems out of court. Employees whose complaints have been heard and rejected by their peers are less likely to call a lawyer. If an employee does seek a court decision after being rejected by peer review, chances of the employee prevailing are slim.

Behind the peer review process are five core assumptions:

1. Employee disputes should be resolved through internal mechanisms. School peer mediation centers do not need to relegate these issues outside of the school building.

2. The resolution of disputes by peers is credible and acceptable and has worked successfully in schools for years.

3. Bringing disputes to a peer panel, like a school mediation center, is a valid problem-solving model.

4. Peers can be trained as fact-finders and facilitators of decisions.

5. The process, both at the workplace and in schools, is practical and cost-effective.

Peer review panels are not the stand-alone single conflict resolution system for all organizations. However, a deep assessment of the workplace according to its history, mission, needs and resources, can result in an ADR design that is fair and will empower the people of the organization to resolve their own conflicts.

References

Gosline, A. et al. (2001). Designing Integrated Conflict Management Systems: Guidelines for Practitioners and Decision Makers in Organizations. Ithaca, NY: Institute on Conflict Resolution.

Lipsky, D., Seeber, R., & Fincher, R. (2003). Emerging Systems for Managing Workplace Conflict. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.