When should employers use mediation in workplace disputes?

Mediation is the most underused form of ADR in individual workplace disputes.

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) includes arbitration, conciliation, and mediation.

Most employers only encounter ACAS's involvement when a claim is heading towards the Employment Tribunal. And their involvement is only to conciliate.

That is reactive.

Mediation is often confused with conciliation. It isn’t the same.

Conciliation negotiates settlement. Mediation addresses the conflict.

Arbitration — where an external decision-maker imposes a binding outcome — is virtually never used in individual workplace conflict.

The Employment Tribunal system is at breaking point

The Employment Rights Act 2025, as it is implemented, is likely to aggravate that mainly through

1. Shorter qualifying periods to bring an unfair dismissal claim
2. The removal of the ordinary unfair dismissal compensation cap
3. Broad statutory protections that are increasingly accessible


When it becomes easier to bring claims, more claims will be brought.
The cost is not just compensation.

It is legal spend.

Senior management time pulled into process.

Line managers diverted from delivery.

Time that should be spent running the business.

Therefore, mediation, in particular, is becoming an increasingly valid approach to resolution.

But it only works where both parties engage in good faith — and if that willingness is absent, it is not worth pursuing. So, making it an employment contract term is unlikely to be a good option.

However, where it is there, mediation can resolve disputes before they harden into legal claims.

HR should now be examining mediation:

• Strategically — as part of an ERA 2025 driven rethink of employee relations
• Operationally — as early intervention where a conflict situation has materialised.

That strategic assessment should not remain within HR. It belongs at Board level.