Why you should become a mediator

As an HR Business Partner who handles a high volume of employee relations cases each week, becoming a certified mediator and conflict resolution trainer has given me a powerful set of tools to meet both the day-to-day needs and long-term strategic goals of my employer.

It’s also provided me with a leading edge skillset that will help to future-proof my career going forward into an ever more rapidly evolving workplace full of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity as employers adapt to AI.

I wanted to share my perspective to you as an HR professional to encourage you to consider taking the same path, or if you’re an organizational leader, to consider the negative impacts of conflict to your business.

First things first: during the summer of 2025, I took the Certified Workplace Mediator and Trainer in Conflict Resolution (the CMT) virtually through the Mediation Training Institute (MTI) based out of Eckard College, Florida. It’s a 40hr program spread over three days a week for three weeks. My trainer was fellow Irish woman Mary Lou O’Kennedy who runs her own practice called Oak Dynamics.

The experience was incredibly positive, providing an ideal mix of instructor-led teaching and group practice (which can be intimidating at first), gave me deep insight into the dynamics of conflict and its resolution, and provided higher-level learning that felt as intense (or more so) than one of my masters in HR courses. Mary Lou is a wonderful trainer, very personable and supportive, and draws from years of experience in the field.

So, why mediation and conflict resolution?

The cost of workplace conflict is approximately $540bn (adjusted for inflation) according to the CCP Global Human Capital Report (2008) with an average of 2.8hrs per week for each and every employee in the country spent dealing with conflict.

The MTI highlights that workplace conflict leads to wasted time, lower motivation and productivity, increased turnover, disruptive restructuring, higher healthcare premiums, cases of theft, sabotage, vandalism, and even violence, an increase in grievances and lawsuits, poor quality decision-making, and an overall negative impact on strategic organizational goals.

(Organizations can estimate their own cost using the MTI’s Conflict Calculator)

In my day-to-day role, I see conflicts that tie up management and HR resources for days or even weeks, burnout, turnover, and the organization’s mission becoming sidelined as employees in conflict see ‘winning the fight’ rather than cooperating to meet team goals as their own personal mission. 

In this environment, my own role then becomes reactive rather than forward thinking, more of an employee relations firefighter than an architect; but, mediation have given me advanced tools to nip conflict in the bud, while training managers on conflict resolution starts to build the foundations for a strategic organizational approach to reducing the costs of conflict.

For your own HR career, these may just be some of the key skills to learn as AI continues to transform HR departments. Trends indicate that jobs involving “basic data inputting and processing” will see a significant decline in the coming years, but roles involving “higher cognitive” and “social and emotional” labor will actually benefit significantly from the coming changes. (Skill shift: Automation and the future of the workforce, McKinsey, 2018)

In short, there’ll be fewer and fewer transactional HR roles where automation and AI agents can do the job better, faster, and more accurately than an overworked human team member with an already full inbox. But, there’ll only be a greater demand for HR pros who can coach, lead, advise, consult, and handle conflict.