Mediation and Conflict Resolution

Who it's for

HR business partners, employee relations advisers, HR generalists, and managers and senior colleagues asked to resolve a conflict between two people informally.

Output

• A scored report after every room, with the moment that earned each score and one recommended focus
• A trajectory across every attempt, each a new scene for the mediator's current standing with the parties
• For the HR lead, a Ren summary of each participant and a team report once three have finished a room
• Scored against published frameworks: conflict-mode flexibility, high-stakes dialogue, influence without authority, care and challenge, stakeholder salience, interest-based negotiation, disciplined prioritisation, conversation layers, participatory facilitation, Roger Schwarz's ground rules, Rest's four-component model and bounded ethicality

Program contents

1. Surfacing the conflict · Agreeing the remit — Team Conflict · Managing Up
2. Bringing both sides in · Holding neutrality — Stakeholder Influence · Saying No Simulation
3. Running the joint session · Integrity under pressure — Meeting Facilitation · Ethics Test

How the program works

A weekly program for HR business partners, employee relations advisers and the managers asked to mediate between colleagues, assigned by an HR lead, built on Renatus. Six simulation rooms · Three weeks, two rooms a week · Unlimited attempts · Ongoing thereafter.

The rooms

Why this program exists

HR business partners and trusted managers are asked to have a word with two colleagues who have stopped speaking, and the first few conversations decide whether the matter is settled between them or arrives as a grievance a month later. This program prepares them through simulation. Ren builds each scene from the participant's real role, their standing with the people in the dispute and their organisation, and plays every person in it, from the colleague who will not come to the table to the director who has already decided who is at fault, so no two scenes are the same.

What you'll achieve

1. Rehearsal of the whole informal arc, as often as they want it: the conflict named, the remit agreed, the reluctant party brought in, the side not taken, the joint session run, the line held
2. A scored report after every room: each dimension with the moment that earned its score, strengths, development areas, blind spots where the evidence shows them, and one recommended focus with a first step
3. A one-line frame for the mediation they are most likely to run, written in week 1 and rewritten in week 3
4. Unlimited attempts at every room, each a different scene calibrated to their current standing, scored on the same dimensions and charted against every attempt before it

At a glance

Who it's for

HR business partners, employee relations advisers, HR generalists, and the managers and senior colleagues asked to mediate informally between two people, whether or not either reports to them. Every room calibrates to the standing the participant holds with the people in the scene, so one cohort can include a first-time team lead and a senior HR business partner. It assumes participants know their organisation's grievance and dignity at work policies, and it rehearses the judgement those policies are applied with before a matter becomes a case.

Cadence

3 weeks

1

Surfacing the conflict · Agreeing the remit · Team Conflict · Managing Up · Read Fairness and Directness; read the one-line frame; read Grounding

2

Bringing both sides in · Holding neutrality · Stakeholder Influence · Saying No Simulation · Read Durability and Framing; read Clarity and Relationship; read the Ren summary across four rooms

3

Running the joint session · Integrity under pressure · Meeting Facilitation · Ethics Test · Read Air-time Management and Closure; read Ethical Recognition and Cost Tolerance; read the team report; set the ongoing plan

Session by session