We often have people attending our training who are already qualified mediators, and it's always interesting to receive their feedback. This can mainly be categorised as follows:-
Online versus in-person
It's really no surprise to us that those who had previously attended online training found a significant difference. Despite it costing a lot of money for venues, we refuse to train mediators over a screen. As much as I like to give everybody the benefit of the doubt, anybody who tells me they spent three or five days staring at a screen and didn't get distracted by things like emails. I don't believe them!
Prior to the covid pandemic, online training wasn't recognised by the Civil Mediation Council (CMC) who did lower that standard temporarily to enable training providers to still operate commercially. We didn't take them up on that offer, as we were unwilling to compromise on quality.
Obviously the training providers who experienced running their training online realised the increased profit margins they can benefit from by not paying for expensive venues but not decreasing prices accordingly. When the pandemic was over, understandably they didn't want to start paying for venues again, and I was personally disappointed that the CMC chose not to revert back to the previously higher standard for training providers.
I have seen a definite dip in the reputation and quality of workplace mediators over the last few years, and online training is (in my opinion) a significant contributor to this. We will never compromise our standards.
Civil & commercial mediator training
Unfortunately, anybody who is qualified as civil & commercial mediator can gain CMC accreditation as a workplace mediator by attending just 8 hours of additional training.
I am qualified civil & commercial mediator having attended 40 hours of training in 2018. I qualified as a workplace mediator in 1996 (30 years ago at the time of writing) and I can absolutely promise that having 8 hours of training for workplace is nowhere near sufficient, which is why these mediators struggle with resolving workplace disputes.
Whilst employment mediation has some similarities, workplace mediation is a completely different skillset to commercial mediation. Workplace is all about building platforms for trust and enabling professional, courteous and respectful working relationships.
Often these delegates have also been sold civil & commercial mediation as covering workplace mediation, when it doesn't. They will normally attend our 3-day internal workplace mediator programme. Whilst it's great that they now understand workplace mediation, I find it very disappointing that some providers will mis-sell their training (see this blog). We would never tell anybody that our training covers family mediation or civil & commercial mediation as it doesn't - we are specialists in workplace and employment mediation.
Practical experience and real-life cases
One of the key aspects of a great mediator training programme is the quality of role plays. This is the main area delegates worry about (see this blog), and it's so important they provide highly effective experience.
One of the most common comments we get after our training is how much people were dreading role plays, and how much they got from them. Delegates have a go at mediating a different case each day for the first three days, and these are real-life cases which I have personally mediated - obviously names, etc are changed to maintain confidentiality.
The combination of real-life cases in-person, with experienced coaching from incrediby capable mediators is something many already qualified mediators have never experienced.
The quality of trainers
It's absolutely critical that the person training workplace mediators is not only a qualified workplace mediator themselves, but also incredibly experienced. Our trainers and assessors have incredible experience, and a key part of the learnings is sharing stories and coaching.
When you have a combination of in-person training, lots of practise and coaching around real-life cases, and coaching throughout from experienced mediators, this is a magical combination and why we receive the great feedback we do!
