Mediation should create an equitable but fair outcome.
In the workplace it is an unfortunate possibility that two employees will eventually have a serious disagreement, or an event will come to pass that creates a serious conflict between two or more workers. Because of this likelihood, it is important for employers to have mechanisms in place to ethically resolve these conflicts.
Necessity
Conflicts in the workplace can hurt productivity and a company's bottom line. If there is friction between employees, they will probably not work together as effectively as they did before the conflict arose. Additionally, conflict between employees can trigger office politics to create a tense office situation which hurts everyone's productivity. If the members of a workplace were chosen by recruiters and management because of their abilities and potential to contribute to the company, then resolving the issue is necessary to avoid losing one, or both of the employees.
Mediator Independence
While managers can try their hand at mediating small scale conflicts in a business, more serious disagreements are generally handled by professional mediators. These are individuals who are trained in ways to explore a problem in a non-judgmental way to find avenues for bringing the conflict to an amicable close. While their training is useful in and of itself, their independence from the office and any supervisory chain creates a mediation environment in which participants can trust that the mediator is truly free of bias from having any vested interests, be they personal or professional, in the conflict.
Respect
For a business conflict mediation to be ethical, and effective, it has to be conducted in a situation of mutual respect for both parties. Many times a sense of not having sufficient respect in the workplace is the core cause of the conflict in the first place. Not considering the concerns of one, or both, of the parties involved violates the ethical basis of mediation by seeking to help one side "win" the conflict, rather than resolving the core issues that are feeding the conflict.
Integrity of Process
Observing the ethical foundations of mediation is necessary to preserve the integrity of a company's conflict resolution process. If mediations are not conducted with respect for both parties, or by impartial mediators, then not only will they not resolve the conflicts they seek to tackle but employees will learn that the company doesn't have a viable system for managing conflict resolutions. This can lead to conflicts that continue to fester, hurt business productivity, and could lead to a company losing valuable employees that an ethical mediation program could have preserved.
