Dan Gordon has saved his employers hundreds of thousands of dollars by using alternative dispute resolution to solve employee disputes.
At one public-sector organization he worked for, grievances had piled up until there were more than 350 unhappy relationships, he said. The union had stopped talking and there was “a complete breakdown of trust.”
It was obvious they had to try a different approach. He took the union head aside and asked, “Why don’t we try to do some alternative dispute resolution? Let’s just try it for one day. We’ll get a mediator in for $1,000 — $500 for you and $500 for me — and we’ll see how it goes.”
The union boss agreed and in one day they tackled 11 grievances. “This worked so well that we agreed to do it again and again,” said Gordon. Within six months they had mediated all 350 disputes.
It was strictly a question of money, he said. Taking a grievance through formal channels was costing $5,000 per dispute at the very least, and a lot more than that for complicated cases. It was easy to convince both sides to at least give it a try.
It worked so well that when he took his next job, as director of HR and facilities services with the Ontario Ministry of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation, he used ADR right off the bat.
“In the five years I’ve been here we’ve gone from quite a large backlog of grievances — 80 or 90 of them — to last year when we had (only) one. This year (2002) we have none.”
People are fighting less, and because grievances are being heard, employees feel better about their place in the organization. They know that if they have a problem they will be listened to, Gordon said. Within a year and a half, the backlog was cleared up.
Gordon went so far as to have his whole HR department trained in ADR techniques. Problems get nipped in the bud when someone in HR sees a dispute brewing, he said. HR can take the parties aside and try to get at the root of the problem. Even if the situation can’t be contained and a formal mediator has to be brought in, money is still saved.
“It’s still a lot cheaper than the formal process where we had to get a lawyer. Grievances could cost $10,000 and some of them a lot more if they dragged on,” he said.
“It just made good economic sense. The government said ‘operate more like a business’ and we heard them.”
Having a workplace that is accustomed to using ADR techniques to address employee grievances paid off during a recent strike, he said. The strike was long and bitter, but the ministry won kudos for the way in which it dealt with its employees.
“I credit a lot of that to the fact that people are applying ADR techniques on a daily basis.”
Joyce Grant is a Toronto-based freelance writer.
At one public-sector organization he worked for, grievances had piled up until there were more than 350 unhappy relationships, he said. The union had stopped talking and there was “a complete breakdown of trust.”
It was obvious they had to try a different approach. He took the union head aside and asked, “Why don’t we try to do some alternative dispute resolution? Let’s just try it for one day. We’ll get a mediator in for $1,000 — $500 for you and $500 for me — and we’ll see how it goes.”
The union boss agreed and in one day they tackled 11 grievances. “This worked so well that we agreed to do it again and again,” said Gordon. Within six months they had mediated all 350 disputes.
It was strictly a question of money, he said. Taking a grievance through formal channels was costing $5,000 per dispute at the very least, and a lot more than that for complicated cases. It was easy to convince both sides to at least give it a try.
It worked so well that when he took his next job, as director of HR and facilities services with the Ontario Ministry of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation, he used ADR right off the bat.
“In the five years I’ve been here we’ve gone from quite a large backlog of grievances — 80 or 90 of them — to last year when we had (only) one. This year (2002) we have none.”
People are fighting less, and because grievances are being heard, employees feel better about their place in the organization. They know that if they have a problem they will be listened to, Gordon said. Within a year and a half, the backlog was cleared up.
Gordon went so far as to have his whole HR department trained in ADR techniques. Problems get nipped in the bud when someone in HR sees a dispute brewing, he said. HR can take the parties aside and try to get at the root of the problem. Even if the situation can’t be contained and a formal mediator has to be brought in, money is still saved.
“It’s still a lot cheaper than the formal process where we had to get a lawyer. Grievances could cost $10,000 and some of them a lot more if they dragged on,” he said.
“It just made good economic sense. The government said ‘operate more like a business’ and we heard them.”
Having a workplace that is accustomed to using ADR techniques to address employee grievances paid off during a recent strike, he said. The strike was long and bitter, but the ministry won kudos for the way in which it dealt with its employees.
“I credit a lot of that to the fact that people are applying ADR techniques on a daily basis.”
Joyce Grant is a Toronto-based freelance writer.
