Supporting The Unseen Civil & Workplace Mediation Services
“Mediation is a tool that helps to ‘bridge the gap’ between differences, and this requires knowing and respecting the culture of people that you meet.” Alessandra Sgubini
About Parity Mediation
Parity Mediation, an initiative by IStraker Consultants, is dedicated to supporting individuals in their mental wellbeing. We focus on truly seeing each person, ensuring their uniqueness is not just acknowledged but integral to our process, impacting every step we take forward.
We are Associate members of the Civil Mediation Council, trained with Pragmatism and fully insured to provide civil and workplace mediation.
Why do we do this?
The frustration is why is this even a question. Cultural, racial, gender, social, disability, beliefs, age and sexual orientation form the basis of who we are and these individual elements are unique to an individual which means how they are treated and how a personal issue may impact a person should be acknowledged with these in mind. The context of diversity must be at the forefront of any healing process and for this to be a positive experience individuals must be understood. When we are dealing with conflicting areas and diversity is a component we believe that for a healthy outcome diversity must be represented.
Whilst creating the concept of this within a therapeutic setting it felt important to IStraker Consultants to promote the importance of this and this created a safe space for those from diverse backgrounds to feel both represented and heard within a therapeutic setting. From this we have worked internationally on both an individual and corporate basis providing expert support to the unseen. From this, we decided to create this space within the field of mediation which in itself is a highly emotive space so the more we can do to reduce the pressure the better for he most positive outcomes.
According to the Journal of mediation and applied conflict analysis 2016, a failure to address culture and diversity issues is to risk seriously limiting equality of access to mediation, and possibly to withdrawal from the process, by clients who experience ethnocentric, ‘one size fits all’ communication. We and they may be speaking a common verbal language, yet conversing from significantly different cultural constructs, may make it akin to speaking in different tongues.
What is mediation?
The CMC states Mediators help those in dispute communicate about the issues of concern to them, and helps participants find solutions that are acceptable to everybody involved. Mediation is a voluntary and confidential process where a neutral third party meets with the disputants and helps to open lines of communication so that the parties can arrive at a mutually agreeable, fair, and workable resolution. A typical mediation session settles the case within one eight-hour session, saving the parties both time and money. This is in contrast with arbitration and litigation, which are often very stressful processes and not supporting the business paradigm, because they can last years and cost the parties inordinate legal fees. Both arbitration and litigation inevitably end in a win-lose situation where a binding decision is made by an arbitrator or judge. With mediation, on the other hand, decisions are typically win-win and made by the parties.