IUA HR Conference 2021 Part 5 Ray Flaherty

i hope you are all suitably refreshed and comforted for those of you skeptics who didn't believe we're actually in galway we're going to show you a shot of what it's like out the window here in the burn suite in the galmont we are all worried that the talent will flee and they'll all move to portugal or the greek islands to work uh for for our various universities but who couldn't live in galway with that view so we're looking across there at galway bay the day has really brightened up for those of you who know the air you'll see the hills of the burn over in county clear you might notice mutton island lighthouse and the walkway out to us but it's a lovely day it's really cleared up so just to prove that we're actually here now okay so i want to introduce our next speaker who is i'm going to call him the godfather of a conflict resolution right you don't seem too upset by that i did [Music] ray has been working in this space for three decades uh primarily as in as a you know senior hr roles in industry including for example senior hr advisor to bank of ireland he left that role 20 years ago to go into consulting and in 2014 indeed set up his own consulting firm and that is concordia consulting you can see the logo behind them services in the area of investigation mediation conflict coaching conciliation facilitation arbitration and negotiation all of these things i like to think of them mediation array as the dark boat the dark art of hr as well as the great white hope because you save a lot of time a lot of effort and a lot of emotion and i i know that the people listening in are very aware that because they're dealing with those kind of issues day to day i should mention that he's accredited mediator accredited mediator trainer i should also mention that he's on the panel of adjudication officers at the national workplace relations commission and the most important thing of all he's a graduate of nui galway i should for the record they'll say that we share him with trinity although with a surname like flaherty i think you must speak all the way through and through that must be where your heart is right thanks absolutely now rey is going to speak about the topic of mediation in a remote environment he's going to draw on his experience there and to share how that works and some of the the pros and cons of it and i should say that his presentation is 15 minutes long he has purposely left nine or 10 minutes for questions because he expects things he talks about today are really going to prompt a lot of questions in the chat so please do fire them in we have loads of time to come back to ray with questions in the meantime ray i'm going to hand over to you wave with you and i'll be back to you in 15 minutes right okay thank you john thank you very much for for that introduction um i'm not so sure about the godfather piece i think it's more of the grandfather piece at this stage uh good morning everybody uh thank you for inviting me along this morning it's it's a real pleasure and a privilege to be addressing you this morning i'm very conscious that after the the the all of the the positivity and enthusiasm and optimism of the earlier session around uh remote working etc and the hybrid working model that i'm now going to drop a workplace conflict in the middle of all this just in case you were getting too carried away with yourselves my topic this morning is mediation in a hybrid working environment dispute resolution in the new normal now uh i suppose that brings me to consider two questions what has happened to dispute resolution during the pandemic during the lockdowns in particular and how will it emerge from that and how will it operate in in the new uh hybrid work situation that we've been we've been talking about all morning and that we're all we're all actually experiencing and and probably gr grappling with so i'm going to consider these two questions in the context of roomies field uh in a sense roomies field in a post pandemic setting sorry i'm presuming my my uh technology is working and that my my slides are being presented i presume if not tiger somebody will will let me know but um ruby's field in a post-pandemic setting and i suspect a lot of you are rubbing your chins and saying what the hell is he talking about with roomies field well roomie was a 13th century persian philosopher and poet and i came across a quote of rumi's many years ago that has really stuck with me and has in fact influenced particularly my mediation if not all of the work i do in in workplace conflict dispute resolution and and and that quote was or is out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there is a field i will meet you there now if you think about that that's that's at the core of mediation that's what mediation tries to do it tries to bring disputants or parties in conflict beyond the right and the wrong because two parties coming to a workplace conflict are absolutely entrenched in the view that their right the other person is wronged or they are being runged by by by that other other person so i try to create the the mediation space in roomies field get people to to to come into that um that place and and have their their interactions their discussions there so what has been the impact then on on on mediation well i suppose firstly my definition of mediation and you'll all have your own definitions and you'll see the definitions in your various policies and so on and the mii and places like that but my my my preferred definition of mediation is that it's an imperfect process that employs an imperfect third party i.e the mediator uh to help imperfect people come to an imperfect agreement in an imperfect world now i'm i'm i'm not so sure everybody would agree with that but when you think about it there is nothing perfect about any of us as human beings there is certainly nothing perfect about any of us in in our professional and and and work lives and and there is nothing perfect about the processes we use to uh to try to resolve that conflict and i can guarantee you there is absolutely nothing perfect about mediators or most mediators and certainly i i i would i would a subscribe to that so if you take that as the definition of of a mediation what could cover do to that how could it make it any worse or any better uh in a sense it's an imperfect process having to deal with the challenge of uh lockdowns and working from home and all of the the the attendant challenges that that it came with that well initially when march uh of uh 2020 hit um nobody visited roomies field just it lay fallow for a number of months uh and gradually as things began to open up a bit again and and and workplaces got over the immediate challenge of just coping with working from home and coping with uh all of those challenges and things began to come back um suddenly er er roomies field went online now if you had said to me two years ago would you conduct your mediations online now they would have said absolutely not mediation okay there's lots of things might work on on uh online uh on zoom or [Music] microsoft teams or google meets or whatever platform you use but mediation isn't one of them well i've already told you i'm not perfect uh i got it wrong yes we it did work and we did uh conduct mediations online and there's lots of people lots of mediators i talked to say i i'm going to do the bulk of my mediation going forward online and i i i think rather than like everything else we were talking earlier on about you know what's what's what's the right a a way to approach the working from home piece or the hi the height the hybrid working environment uh what's what's what's mediation going to look like in that in that hybrid environment this famous word that essentially i think has come from from the pandemic the blended approach i i i think it's it's um it's going to be a bit of both it's going to be a bit of face-to-face it's going to be a bit of a virtual or remote and i i genuinely believe that the one-to-one meetings the pre-meetings that a mediator conducts the confidential one-to-one meeting with each of the parties uh i i i see no reason why they should not be online or remote from from from here on i found they've worked extremely well obviously um a phone meeting doesn't give you anything like the the the remote video does but there is no need to travel a distance either for the mediator or for the parties in dispute to have a one-to-one meetings and and they are are very a remote friendly in my view however the the plenary session and that's where the two parties in dispute and the mediator uh meet and that's where the real that's rumi's field and i honestly believe that we're going to have to go open the gate and actually physically go into roomies field meet face to face why am i saying that well and this is a personal perspective because i i i fully understand other mediators will um have a different approach and a different view but the plenary mediation session provides a very special environment for the parties they're meeting under the the the confidential and confidentiality requirements of the process they're there voluntarily so it is quite a special place and they're the two key factors that in my view help mediation successfully assist people in er resolving their their disputes or the conflicts between them and i think it's because there's a dynamic in that room and i don't think you can replicate that dynamic on a a a remote plenary session and i hear what john reardon is saying in terms of of uh what how did he say it read the zoom like you'd read the room well i would respectfully say in in a plenary mediation session i i don't think the room will lend itself to being read as well remotely as it is in the in the in the flesh as it were and in particular for the two parties and i'll i'll give you an example of this i i did a mediation the week before last uh i was i was asked to to assist in a situation where there was a fairly significant dispute had arisen between two members of a senior management team in a company and this was so serious that one of the parties involved was considered tending their resignation now this was somebody in a senior position in an organization that loved her job but because of this incident and the aftermath of the incident with one of her senior management team colleagues was considering um her tendering her resignation at which point the organization got got into a bit of a flat oh my god no you can't do that let's let's let's see can we er mediate this and i was i was asked to do the mediation now did the two pre-meetings online no problem and then we had the we met together uh in a hotel room uh with all the social distancing and all the the the safety protocols etc and just as an aside it's interesting pre pandemic when when i would ask a a hotel to set up a room for a plenary mediation session by taking out the table and just having three chairs spaced in a triangle about a meter and a half or two meters apart they thought that a a you know that i should be certified uh as insane now you go in and it's it's it's it's there for you whether you ask it or not so that's one of the good things that that corbett has done for the mediation world that makes our our plenary meeting set up much more acceptable to to the vast majority of people at this stage are understandable to it in any event so back to my story after about or maybe two hours of an exchange of views and it was quite it it it was quite robust at times and so on and then the party who had i suppose instigated the incident that led to this colleague wanting to resign he just stopped at one stage and he said there's something i'm going to say and he said i thought about this i wasn't going to say it but because of the way this has gone this morning i'm going to say it and at that point he put his elbows on his knees he put his head in his hands and he said and i quote directly i am so so sorry that that incident happened and that was a complete game changer in terms of the conflict between these two people because 10 days earlier he had said to her if you were upset by what happened i'm sorry now you'll all pretty well pick out straight away that that wasn't really an apology that was saying it's your problem if you got upset by this well talk but i i'm sorry you kind of got upset but what happened inside in the face-to-face meeting was so impactful was so real and he actually got emotional and and and teary now it's my view and it's only a personal view that that wouldn't have been achieved on a remote a meeting i i i'm not sure he'd even have said that and even if he did i'm not sure that the impact i mean because you can feel emotion and that's what you can't get on the uh on the the uh the video under on on the remote you can feel that emotion so therefore i i i see where possible at all that the the plenary sessions will will be face to face because in my view it's whatever helps the parties to get resolution that's what we're looking at we want to help them to reach a a a a a resolution and i think the the the face-to-face plenary with the remote one-to-ones that to me is is is mediation in the hybrid environment however just before i finish i'm not sure how much time i'm left but i'm sure john will let me know if if if i'm going over it there is something else that uh the pandemic or the lockdown gave us that i think is going to be very significant in dealing with workplace conflict going forward now it's nothing it's not true to say it was the um pandemic that gave it to us but under cover of the pandemic those of us who eagerly await developments in workplace conflict resolution woke up in january of this year to si number 674 of 2020 on the industrial relations act 1990 and that was the code of practice for employers and employees on the prevention and resolution of bullying at work now uh you you might say to yourself it's so hot it's just a code of practice and it's pulling it it's pulling it all together yes it's a code of practice it's the first time ever a bullying at work quarter practice has got a statutory footing so a statutory instrument it's it's it's now given the the the legal standing that it never had before and the definition even though the definition doesn't change the definition is exactly the same as as will be in all of your policies and and that was actually coined by the first a government work group back in the in the 90s that that kind that definition but more importantly it contains something that i have been advocating for years and that's why i was a so pleased to see this in the the new code of practice and that's a thing called the secondary informal process prior to this you had two stages to your dispute resolution under your dignity at work policies you had an informal stage and basically that was mediation so if the parties didn't want to go to mediation it didn't happen if they tried it and it didn't produce a resolution well it it it didn't resolve the problem so you go on to the second stage which was the formal investigation and any of you that have been have managed or have had to to deal with a formal investigations under your dignity at work we'll know that's not a nice place to be it's not nice for the parties it's not nice for the organization uh and to be honest it's not nice sometimes for the the investigator either but um this is a new process that's coming between mediation and the issue going to the formal stage and what what the code of practice says is that you have a nominated person and the the the court says appropriately trained and experienced in in these matters and they're appointed to progress the issue to resolution so that both parties can return to a harmonious working environment without bullying being a factor now i i i think this is going to have a significant positive impact on the the the workplace conflict resolution scene because what this does it allows somebody to get in as i used to say to rummage around in the issues to talk to the parties to to hear what they have to say to look at the facts of the case not to make a a ruling not to make an adjudication not to make a finding or or anything like that but just to look at it and to see can you help the parties resolve their issue and i think that's that's a big uh difference and i was glad to see it in there and i'm actually at the moment working on on two particular cases uh it's it's harder work from my perspective uh than than the mediation because in in the the mediation the parties do most of the work now i find i'm i'm i'm shuttling between people and and trying to get people on board and trying to talk to them as it involves coaching it involves a reality checking it involves all of that but i think this this will have a positive impact on workplace dispute resolution particularly relating to dignity at work issues in in the hybrid work environment as as as as as we go forward and i i'm i'm not sure um i have a couple of questions for you right yes yes yeah glad we can give some time to them because there are actually two really good questions from colleagues here listening in okay and they speak very much to what you were talking about but i think we go into the practicalities of these things first the first one is how do you reframe communication in an online in a remote environment like in in the context of you mentioned emotion but those kind of non-verbal cues how do you do with june virtual and just from a practical point of view for those of us who haven't had to manage such a kind of an intense engagement online are you using things like raise your hand are you you know muting people are you using any of those you know thumbs up emojis probably not but are there any extra tools when zoom are you just using it you know as a means of talking down the camera to people primarily john i'm i'm i'm i'm i'm just using it as as a as a means of connecting and and and i find particularly if when i was putting i did plenary sessions uh remotely um ev everybody just had their the the if there's only three people involved it's it's it's easy to to to manage it um and and uh you know i was interested to to hear john reardon talk about himself as a as an i.t or technological geriatric at the age of 55. you can imagine i'm a decade or so further on what what it's like what it's like for me but i i i don't like a lot of that uh technology stuff because i think it takes away from the interaction from the conversation from from from from the dynamic and one of the i suppose the the more minor reasons i don't anticipate doing too many plenary sessions online is i'd be afraid in my life if i was doing a caucus which is where you speak to the parties separately that if i didn't put somebody into the lobby correctly i'd be having a confidential discussion with party a while party b is sitting there listening into it so that the technology does just just scare me a little bit but um that that's supposed to answer the question i just use it as as as a mere means of of of communicating but it's not as good because as i said in in my presentation you you can feel things in the room when you're there with people like that apology for instance that that i spoke about earlier i thank thanks ray one more great question we can squeeze in we're running up against time at the moment from pauline i love this one do you sense or foresee that remote working may increase the need for mediation because maybe misunders misunderstandings between work colleagues via email you know the way sometimes tone isn't true so do you think that maybe increase the need for you know these mediating these difficult conflicts um i i i think the honest answer to that john and pauline is yes and no i i i think remote communications and particularly email communication and so on has the potential to to create or increase a potential for uh for for workplace conflict on the other hand it's it's removing as well some of the things that can happen in uh you know when people are side by side in a in a in in in in a workplace but um i i i just don't know i i think it'll probably probably be a bit of both but it it does it it does reflect back a little bit to uh the the panel discussion aft after the last session where people talked about you know line responsibility and a new skill set and having to get a new skill set to deal with the hybrid or remote working environment i found myself asking the question at that stage will anything change and and i'm not so sure or will it will it be difficult will it be will it be harder because the thought that came to my mind was that good managers and good supervisors will continue to manage well and in fact i think they will probably take advantage of some of the positives of remote working to do it to do it better however and there's a big however you encounter in workplace conflict situations inappropriate misguided poor weak absent management and they don't go away via digital or face to face does does does digital give an extra excuse for not doing those things and and i i can say that in 90 plus percent of the of the workplace dispute situations if you run a timeline from when it started to when it erupted you will probably find somewhere along there that there was an opportunity missed by management to have resulted at an earlier point so i i think all of that stuff is still in there john and and i think it's it's it's 50 50 as to whether it'll be worse or better very much for sharing your perspective we really appreciate we wish we could give you more time one point we have to move on to the next one that was ray clark thank you ray for sharing your expertise there and i think it chimes with a lot of what we see at the end of the day remote or not we're we're dealing with humans in nature and we need to be able to pick up on those cues when things aren't going so well okay