The Guidance explains the four types of ADR that are available to encourage parties to resolve their cases by agreement: ACAS conciliation, judicial mediation, judicial assessment, and dispute resolution appointments.
The introduction to the Guidance stresses the financial and emotional costs attached to employment tribunal litigation and the risks involved. It explains that resolving a case through agreement allows parties to minimise these different types of cost and risk and states that the employment tribunals should be encouraging parties to do so.
The Guidance focuses on judicial mediation, judicial assessment and dispute resolution appointments, the latter being a new form of non-consensual ADR piloted recently in Midlands West.
The Guidance outlines the main differences between these three kinds of ADR:
- Judicial mediation is consensual, confidential and ‘facilitative’, which means that the employment judge conducting the mediation will generally not give any party an indication of their prospects of success (unless the parties agree that the medication can be evaluative).
- Judicial assessment is consensual, confidential and ‘evaluative’, meaning that the employment judge will give the parties an evaluation of their respective prospects of success and possible outcomes in terms of remedy, while remaining impartial.
- Dispute resolution appointments are non-consensual, confidential and evaluative, meaning that the tribunal may arrange such an appointment even if the parties do not desire one (although it is only the appointment that is non-consensual, the parties are not compelled to accept the outcome).
The Guidance includes three appendices that set out the types of case suited to each type of ADR and explains in more detail what happens in at a judicial mediation/judicial assessment/ dispute resolution appointment etc.
