22-09-2026
Most workplace disputes do not start out as legal problems. They start as a rota change nobody explained, a piece of feedback that landed badly, or two capable people who have quietly stopped speaking to each other. Left alone, a surprising number of them finish as grievances, resignations or tribunal claims.
Acas research on the costs of workplace conflict puts the total bill to British employers at around £28.5 billion a year, but the more useful figures sit underneath that headline. Running formal disciplinary and grievance procedures costs UK employers an estimated £2.36 billion a year. Resolving matters informally, which includes workplace mediation, costs around £250 million, roughly a tenth as much. The legal stage, meanwhile, accounts for something in the region of £770 million.
The expensive part of a workplace dispute, in other words, is rarely the tribunal. It is the machinery that grinds into motion long before anyone gets near one.
That is the argument for mediation, and it is a stronger one this year than it was last year.
Workplace mediation is a voluntary, confidential conversation between people in dispute, facilitated by an impartial third party who has no stake in the outcome. The mediator does not investigate, does not decide who was right, and does not impose anything. Their job is to help the parties work out whether they can find a way of working together, and on what terms.
It is deliberately future-focused. A mediator will let people say what has happened and how it felt, because that usually needs saying, but the useful part of the day is the shift from what went wrong to what happens on Monday morning.
The mediator can be internal or external. The Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures encourages employers and employees to consider an independent third party and notes that this can be a trained internal mediator provided they have had no involvement in the matter. Larger employers often train their own. Smaller ones tend to buy the service in, either from Acas or from a private provider.
That emphasis looks set to strengthen. In July 2026 Acas opened a consultation on a redrafted Code, aimed specifically at promoting early and informal resolution of concerns at work, with a closure date of 23 September 2026. The current Code was issued in 2015 and last fully revised in 2009, so this is a rewrite rather than a tidy-up. Nothing has changed yet and the draft may well shift before it is finalised, but the direction is worth noting, because the Code carries real weight. Tribunals must take it into account and can increase or reduce an award by up to 25% where an employer or worker has unreasonably failed to follow it.
There is no statutory regulation of workplace mediators in England and Wales, so accreditation matters. It is sensible to ask about a mediator's training, accreditation, experience and professional standards for example registration with the Civil Mediation Council, or training accredited by Acas or the CIPD.
These three get used interchangeably, and they do quite different jobs. GOV.UK sets out the distinctions in its guidance on solving a workplace dispute, but in short:
Mediation is voluntary, informal and usually happens inside the organisation, often before any formal process has begun. Nothing is decided for the parties.
Conciliation through Acas is aimed squarely at settling a potential or actual tribunal claim. In almost all cases a prospective claimant must notify Acas before lodging a claim, and the conciliator will try to broker a settlement. If one is reached, it is recorded in a COT3 and is legally binding. Under regulations that took effect on 1 December 2025, the early conciliation period now runs for up to twelve weeks rather than six, which gives both sides considerably more room to negotiate than they used to have.
Arbitration under the Acas scheme is voluntary but binding and is confined to a narrow category of claims. It is very rarely used.
There is also judicial mediation, offered by an employment judge once a claim is already under way. Useful, but by that stage the relationship is usually beyond saving.
A typical workplace mediation runs to a day, sometimes less. The mediator meets each person separately first, partly to hear their account and partly to establish what they actually want. A joint session usually follows, though a skilled mediator will not force one if the parties are not ready.
If things resolve, the outcome is written down. It is worth understanding what that document is and is not. A mediation agreement is normally a working arrangement rather than a contract: it records what people have committed to do differently, and it draws its force from the fact that both sides agreed to it. It does not settle legal claims. If someone is giving up the right to bring a tribunal claim, that requires either a COT3 through Acas or a settlement agreement, a settlement agreement is only valid for this purpose if the employee has received advice from a relevant independent adviser on its terms and effect. Anyone contemplating one should speak to a solicitor before signing.
Confidentiality is one of mediation's genuine strengths, but it is often oversold. It usually rests primarily on the mediation agreement and the parties' obligations of confidentiality. In some cases, discussions may also attract without prejudice protection where there is an existing legal dispute and the mediation is a genuine attempt to settle it.
Mediation agreements commonly provide exceptions for matters such as safeguarding concerns, serious risk of harm or information that must be disclosed by law. Confidentiality cannot prevent a worker from making a legally protected whistleblowing disclosure, and courts or tribunals may in limited circumstances require relevant material to be disclosed.
A mediator who tells you nothing said in the room can ever leave it is overstating their hand. That is worth knowing before you go in, not afterwards.
Mediation works on relationships. It does not establish facts, and it should never be used to avoid establishing them.
Allegations of harassment, discrimination, bullying or serious misconduct need investigating. An employer who offers mediation as a way of quietly disposing of a harassment complaint is not managing conflict, they are creating a liability, and the position on this is tightening. From 30 October 2026, employers must take "all reasonable steps" to prevent sexual harassment rather than the current "reasonable steps” and will become liable for harassment by third parties such as customers or clients unless they have taken all reasonable steps to prevent it. Steering a complainant towards a private conversation instead of a proper process will not look like a reasonable step. Mediation can sometimes still have a role alongside or after that process, particularly where the parties will continue working together.
Mediation also needs a genuine power balance and genuine willingness. If one party is being pressured into the room, it will not work.
Where it does have a place after a formal process is in repairing what is left. A grievance can be upheld or dismissed and still leave two people who have to share an office. Mediation is often the only thing that helps at that point.
Two things have changed the calculation.
The first is delay. The Ministry of Justice tribunal statistics show 70,000 open single employment tribunal claims at the end of June 2026, up 51% on the same period a year earlier. Once multiple claims are included, the overall open caseload stood at 537,000. During April to June alone, tribunals received 14,000 single claims but disposed of only 6,100. Receipts have continued to outstrip disposals, so the backlog is still growing. A dispute that goes the distance now hangs over both sides for a very long time.
The second is the Employment Rights Act 2025, which is being brought in over 2026 and 2027. Acas has published a plain English summary of what the Act changes and when. From 1 October 2026 the time limit for bringing most tribunal claims doubles from three months to six. From January 2027 the qualifying period for unfair dismissal falls from two years to six months, and the cap on compensatory awards is removed. Much of the detail still depends on regulations that have not yet been made, so employers should treat announced dates as a plan rather than a certainty. The direction, though, is not in doubt: more employees will have the right to claim, and they will have longer to think about it.
Set against that, an afternoon with a mediator in February looks like a bargain.
None of this requires a policy overhaul. It requires managers who notice friction early, a route for raising things informally before anyone reaches for the grievance procedure, and access to someone impartial when a conversation needs a third person in the room. Acas publishes free guidance on workplace mediation covering how it works and how to set it up.
Where a dispute has legal edges, and many of them do, it pays to know that early. If you are unsure whether a situation calls for mediation, an investigation or something else, get in touch with your solicitor before the decision makes itself.