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Australian Workplace Strategies

Mediation & Resolution

Workplace mediation and conflict resolution

AWS provides workplace mediation, facilitated conversations and structured conflict resolution for employers dealing with interpersonal disputes, grievances, team breakdown and post-investigation reintegration. Mediation is voluntary and its outcome depends on the parties; it is suited to matters where the participants can engage safely and where the issues are about working relationships rather than contested serious misconduct.

Facilitated workplace mediation in a calm professional meeting room

Our approach

Intake & assessment

Confidential conversations with each party to test suitability and design the process.

Structured mediation

Joint session led by an independent mediator under agreed ground rules.

Documenting agreed outcomes

Documented behavioural arrangements and review checkpoints. Legal settlement terms require separate legal advice.

Reintegration

Coaching and facilitated check-ins to embed agreed behaviours.

Suitable matters

Communication breakdown, role and workload friction, ongoing interpersonal conflict, grievances that do not require findings, and re-establishing working arrangements after a process concludes.

When mediation may not fit

Where there is a safety risk, alleged serious misconduct or criminality, a significant power imbalance that cannot be managed, an unwilling participant, or where the matter requires findings of fact rather than agreement.

Confidentiality boundaries

Discussions are treated as confidential between the participants and the mediator, subject to safety, legal and reporting obligations. The employer receives whether the matter resolved and any agreed arrangements — not an account of what each party said.

Outputs and follow-up

A written agreement or set of working arrangements where one is reached, an agreed communication to the workplace if needed, and a review checkpoint after an agreed period.

Outcomes

  • Reduced likelihood of escalation to formal complaints or external claims.
  • Documented behavioural agreements with review points.
  • A clearer basis for working arrangements going forward, where agreement is reached.

Engaging a workplace mediator

AWS mediates workplace matters for employers across Melbourne and Australia-wide, in person and remotely. Engagements begin with a suitability assessment and separate intake with each participant, then a structured session — half a day to a full day for most two-party matters. Fees are quoted against a defined scope before work begins. Where a matter is not suitable for mediation, we say so and help identify the right pathway rather than running a process that will not hold.

Workplace mediation: resolving conflict before it escalates →

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