Tuesday, October 19, 2010

10-Plus Tips for Succeeding in an EEOC Mediation: Part One

Workforce Management
In the first installment of a two-part article, an EEOC insider—a former agency mediator who mediated more than 500 cases of alleged discrimination—talks about simmering workplace disputes and how to defuse them, thereby possibly avoiding an EEOC charge. She also offers tips on how to prepare for a successful EEOC mediation. By Kathryn Schear
September 2008

Many professional workplace mediators have said that for every 50 employees there’s one who is a simmering pot. A simmering-pot is a person whose resentment is at a low boil. Simmering-pot employees have turned off, left the organization prematurely, sabotaged their companies or gone out on extended stress leaves. Some of these pots, if left unattended, will become the people who file charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging discrimination. The best goal for your organization is to stay out of the EEOC process, and mediation can help you do that. But if a charge has been filed and you’re before the EEOC, consider these tips on how to prepare for success in a mediation. In part two of this article, I’ll suggest some tips for the EEOC mediation itself, as well as some ideas for steering clear of problems in the future.
Tip One: Don’t ignore the simmering pot. A recent workplace dispute demonstrates this point. It’s a classic example of a simmering pot who was handled "properly," but the handling did not address the employee’s underlying concerns. The result was that the employee filed an EEOC charge anyway.

Full Story: http://www.workforce.com/section/legal/feature/10-plus-tips-succeeding-eeoc-mediation-part-one/index.html

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