Mediation & ADR
6. Conciliation
Authors: Staff Legal Eagle
Firm / Chambers:
Last updated: 19 Aug 2015
- Conciliation is an advisory process. The conciliator is independent and their job is to assist people to identify the issues, discuss options and reach an agreement if possible. However conciliators do express an opinion and do provide advice about the issues, possible outcomes and are more actively involved in reaching an agreement than facilitative methods of ADR.
- The conciliator’s role is to lead the process and assist parties to:
- clearly identify the issues;
- explore options and generate options; and
- reach and draft an agreement.
- Throughout the process the conciliator can provide advice about both the issues and the different outcomes that are being explored. A conciliator will often have extensive legal experience or experience in the industry relating to the dispute.
- Unlike arbitration the conciliator will not impose a solution on the parties but will guide them to reach their own agreement.
- There are a number of different possible outcomes from conciliation depending on what sort of issues are in dispute.
- Any of these may be agreeable outcomes in a workplace dispute for example:
- a written apology;
- an agreement to pay compensation or payment of wages;
- an agreement to change to an internal workplace policy; or
- reinstatement to a position.
- As with mediation the enforceability of a conciliated agreement is complicated by the confidentiality of the process. You may wish to get independent legal advice and have your settlement made into a deed of agreement to ensure that it is legally binding.
- Conciliators are usually registered under the National Mediator Accreditation System. This means that there are national ‘Approval and Practice Standards’ that are applicable.
- Each state and territory can make their own laws regarding regulation and accreditation and so you will need to check what the rules are where you live.
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