Healthier Workplaces

Workplaces have rules of conduct and disciplinary processes to deal with violations of those rules. Restorative justice processes are being used as an alternative to more conventional adjudicatory hearings. These are articles and resources on the use of restorative justice in the workplace.

Health trust looks to solve complaints: from the article in the Gloucestershire Echo: Complaints about staff attitude, a lack of response to phone calls and not enough support have been received by the 2gether NHS Foundation Trust. The mental health services provider in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire received 35 complaints from October to the end of December.
Restorative justice in the workplace: from the entry on Mediation Services: Yet, studies show that the best places to work in North America have not attained that ranking by policies. In fact, some of them have one page of policy – and that page focuses on values and not on dos and don’ts. It starts with hiring the people, first and foremost, with the right values and attitudes, and then ensuring they have the skills necessary to complete their task. So, what does this have to do with restorative principles? Everything! If an organization wants to be a fabulous place to work, they have to figure out what their values are – and often the best places to work have values consistent with restorative principles – respect, honesty, willingness to hold others accountable and be held accountable, ability to take responsibility for one’s actions, the rare and necessary skill of thinking outside the box, curiosity, loyalty to a team, commitment to working with others …
The promise of restorative justice: New approaches for criminal justice and beyond: reviewed by Martin Wright It is becoming increasingly clear that the principles of restorative justice can be used, as the editors say, outside the formal criminal justice system, and this book bears witness to that. Half is about criminal justice, and half about other applications in schools and elsewhere. The contributors reflect the book’s origins among a group at Fresno Pacific University in California, but other chapters come from Bulgaria, Canada, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom.
How do people experience using restorative practice at work?: from Craig Lambert and Rebecca Shipley's article in Resolution: The Goodwin Development Trust is a registered charity situated in the heart of Kingston-upon-Hull (www.goodwintrust.org). Created over fifteen years ago by the residents of the city’s Thornton Estate with the intention of improving local living conditions, the Trust now manages a diverse range of projects.
Can bullying be mediated?: from Tom Sebok's article at Workplace Bullying Institute: This question has arisen recently because the American Arbitration Association (AAA) and Alternative Dispute Resolution Consortium (ADRC) have recommended that colleges and universities provide mediation as an option for faculty who feel bullied by their colleagues. Workplace bullying as defined by the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI – see below) seems to me to rarely be negotiable - or mediable – especially to those experiencing it. However, based in large part on my involvement in helping establish a restorative justice program at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the late 1990’s, I believe there are two specific practices from that tradition that could be used to facilitate meaningful and potentially even healing encounters in these situations. These practices differ from the more familiar forms of mediation and the conditions required for success are very specific. As a university ombuds I have found mediation is often an effective way to help staff and faculty to manage and/or resolve workplace disputes. Sometimes both people have the same concern(s) and sometimes their concerns differ. But in most disputes I have mediated, both parties seemed to contribute fairly equally to the creation of the dispute. As a result, they could usually participate fairly equally in developing solutions. And agreements they made to resolve their disputes – even when they included relationship issues such as respect, trust, or communication - usually seemed balanced, as well.
Brady encourages Magdalene survivors in talks with church: from Genevieve Carbery and Patsy McGarry's entries in Irishtimes.com.: Primate of All-Ireland Cardinal Seán Brady has encouraged Magdalene survivors in their efforts to establish dialogue with religious congregations. The cardinal met representatives of advocacy group Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) for two hours at his residence in Armagh on Thursday evening. He said yesterday it was a welcome opportunity to listen to the perspective of the JFM on “the story of the involvement of church, State and society in the former Magdalene laundries”. “By today’s standards much of what happened at that time is difficult to comprehend,” he said.
Workplace bullying and restorative justice – how to help the families left behind: from Kevin Jones' entry on SafetyAtWorkBlog: A feature article on workplace bullying in The Age newspaper on 10 March 2010 has the additional or secondary benefit of again raising the relevance of “restorative justice” to the issue of occupational safety and health. The main element of the article is the McGregor family who had two children commit suicide over related issues. The son, Stuart McGregor, described as being chronically depressed, was being bullied at work. He confided in his sister, Angela McGregor, over the issues. Angela had been bullied at school. Alannah killed herself. A month later, Stuart followed.
UniCredit Group and restorative justice: by Dan Van Ness UniCredit Group is a European company whose mission is "to create a new way of banking by thriving to serve our clients with innovative solutions." It has 168,000 employees operating in 10,000 branches in 22 countries in both Eastern and Western Europe.
Restorative Justice and Work-Related Death: by Dr. Derek R. Brookes This research project was initiated by the Creative Ministries Network (CMN), which is based in Victoria, Australia. CMN have provided grief-support for family members bereaved by work-related death for more than ten years. Their extensive experience found that the grieving process was prolonged and intensified by how the legal system and other agencies dealt with work-related fatalities. In searching for solutions, the agency was inspired to examine restorative justice (RJ), mainly because they had witnessed the healing that resulted from several (self-arranged) meetings between families and company representatives. CMN subsequently applied for a grant from the Legal Services Board of Victoria to explore the feasibility of RJ in this context, and I was contracted as the principal researcher. The project consisted of two parts. The first involved a literature review, which sought to explore and clarify the kind of issues that might be faced in this context. This included addressing: (1) whether it would be fair and reasonable to invite a company director, manager or worker to take responsibility for their part in a work-related death – even where no personal criminal liability has been (or can be) established; (2) whether RJ can provide any distinctive benefits to those affected; and (3) how best to situate RJ vis-à-vis the legal process.
Brookes, Derek. 2009. Restorative Justice and Work–Related Death: Consultation Transcripts. St. Kilda: Creative Ministries Network.: This document is the companion volume to Restorative Justice and Work-Related Death: Consultation Report (Creative Ministries Network, 2009). It contains the full transcripts of the interviews upon which the analysis in that Report was based. For an explanation of its contents and purpose, please see Section A. of the Report. (excerpt)
Brookes, Derek. 2009. Restorative Justice and Work–Related Death: Consultation Report. St. Kilda: Creative Ministries Network.: This Report is part of a wider project that aims to explore the feasibility of a restorative justice service in the context of work-related deaths in Victoria. This section provides an overview of the Report and the way in which it has developed. (excerpt)
Brookes, Derek. 2008. Restorative Justice and Work‐Related Death: A Literature Review. St. Kilda: Creative Ministries Network.: This literature review is the first stage of a project funded by the Legal Services Board to consider “Can restorative justice better heal bereaved families and workplace grief after a work‐related death, and contribute to improve workplace safety?”
Restorative justice could be answer to doping problem: from Kurt Streeter's column in the LA Times sports section: We've tried blame. We've tried shame. We've tried hard punishment. But on the doping-in-sports front, we're making very little real progress. Suspicion still reigns. Chemists remain ahead of the testers. Every other week there's a new bust. We've hit a wall. There are the athletes who get caught and then, invariably, smile and smirk, duck and dodge, taking as little responsibility as possible. There are those, like me, who feel moral outrage -- that altering the body this way should never be condoned. Our voices are growing faint. There are the hordes who've begun to tune out the whole issue despite feeling, deep in the gut, that something is really wrong: that our games, and by extension society, have been tarnished by widespread doping. Let's try a new approach. It's time to seek higher ground: accountability, responsibility -- and yes, forgiveness....
Aquino, Karl and Goodstein, Jerry. And restorative justice for all: Redemption, forgiveness, and reintegration in organizations.: We explore the topic of restorative justice in organizations. The tradition of restorative justice directs attention to the aftermath of wrongdoing. We highlight three ways offenders (making amends), victims (extending forgiveness), and organizations (fostering reintegration) restore justice in the workplace. Our paper concludes with questions for future research and inquiry. (author's abstract)
. Extending the horizon of business ethics: restorative justice and the aftermath of unethical behavior.: We call for business ethics scholars to focus more attention on how individuals and organizations respond in the aftermath of unethical behavior. Insight into this issue is drawn from restorative justice, which moves beyond traditional approaches that emphasize retribution or rehabilitation to include restoring victims and other affected parties, reintegrating offenders, and facilitating moral repair in the workplace. We review relevant theoretical and empirical work in restorative justice and develop a conceptual model that highlights how this perspective can enhance theory and empirical research in business ethics. We specifically identify topic areas that we believe have particular promise for business ethics scholars to pursue. We close our paper by discussing implications of the restorative justice approach for practicing managers. (author's abstract)
Baron, Linda. Fourteen Months in a FEMA Field Office: A Special Kind of Community Mediation.: Mediating in FEMA was nothing like the court, community, and agency-based programs that I was familiar with. There were no intake forms, no dedicated mediation rooms, no established protocols or procedures, and no one knew much about mediation and conflict resolution. In most mediation programs, mediation is an alternative to something – an alternative to litigation, prosecution, investigation, or some other kind of more formal process. In FEMA, when workplace disputes become intolerable, someone is usually “released” (i.e., sent home). That person may eventually be deployed to another disaster, and might even find himself working next to the same person he had a conflict with in the last disaster. One of our tasks, as in any workplace mediation program, was to facilitate more satisfactory resolution of conflicts both for the present situation, and for t he future. (excerpt)
Fitzgerald, Maureen. Corporate Circles: Transforming Conflict and Building Trusting Teams.: Corporate conflict costs organizations millions of dollars in lost productivity, increased turnover and litigation. This book provides a step-by-step technique for creating conversations that resolve conflict and build trusting relations. In a Corporate Circle, teams come together in a confidential and candid conversation. Corporate Circles enable organizations to: 1) transform conflict into collaboration; 2) build trusting teams and boost morale; 3) repair damaged work relations; 4) enhance individual empathy and accountability; and 5) prevent future conflict. (publisher's abstract).
Costello, Bob and O'Connell, Terry. Restorative Practices in the Workplace: This presentation provides a practical insight into the use of restorative practices in workplaces. It will show how restorative practices, when located within a sound relational framework, have the capacity to change the way workplaces deal with those tensions which potentially, undermine mutual trust and cooperation. Given that we spend so much of our time at work, we need to be conscious of what builds effective workplace relationships. Modeling restorative practices in all our workplace interactions - informally or formally - will make a positive contribution to relationships because their emphasis is directed at satifying the principles of fair process. Individuals are then likely to feel valued, and contribute in constructive and responsive ways. For supervisors and managers, restorative approaches around tensions and workplace difficulties can provide the sort of modelling which engenders trust and commitment. It also provides ways of identifying and resolving early, those difficulties which historically have the potential to escalate. Author's abstract
Reynolds, Carl.. "Workplace mediation.": While there are varying emphases among different people in defining mediation, Reynolds holds mediation to be a process in which a neutral third party assists contending parties to achieve their own resolution of their dispute. In the United Kingdom, mediation has increasingly been extended into the workplace. Relating this development to limitations of traditional grievance and disciplinary procedures, Reynolds summarizes the emergence of mediation in the workplace. He then uses specific examples to show actual schemes for workplace mediation. The chapter also includes recommendations for setting up a workplace mediation system.
Noonan, Francis. The ACAS approach to employment dispute resolution: With respect to the United Kingdom, Noonan observes that the current approach of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) to employment dispute resolution is rooted in employer-trade union interactions in the nineteenth century. ACAS exists to offer neutral, third party services to prevent and resolve workplace disputes. In this chapter Noonan details how ACAS provides such services. With this in mind, and using certain case examples, he presents definitions and discussions of matters such as collective and individual conciliation, arbitration, and advisory mediation.

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Navigation Press Room What is Restorative Justice? Personal Stories Audio/Video Resources Stories from the Media Restorative Justice Processes Kinds of Crimes Restorative Justice around the World Uses Outside of Criminal Justice Schools Healthier Workplaces	Info Healthier Workplaces Workplaces have rules of conduct and disciplinary processes to deal with violations of those rules. Restorative justice processes are being used as an alternative to more conventional adjudicatory hearings. These are articles and resources on the use of restorative justice in the workplace. Health trust looks to solve complaints from the article in the Gloucestershire Echo: Complaints about staff attitude, a lack of response to phone calls and not enough support have been received by the 2gether NHS Foundation Trust. The mental health services provider in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire received 35 complaints from October to the end of December. Restorative justice in the workplace from the entry on Mediation Services: Yet, studies show that the best places to work in North America have not attained that ranking by policies. In fact, some of them have one page of policy – and that page focuses on values and not on dos and don’ts. It starts with hiring the people, first and foremost, with the right values and attitudes, and then ensuring they have the skills necessary to complete their task. So, what does this have to do with restorative principles? Everything! If an organization wants to be a fabulous place to work, they have to figure out what their values are – and often the best places to work have values consistent with restorative principles – respect, honesty, willingness to hold others accountable and be held accountable, ability to take responsibility for one’s actions, the rare and necessary skill of thinking outside the box, curiosity, loyalty to a team, commitment to working with others … The promise of restorative justice: New approaches for criminal justice and beyond reviewed by Martin Wright It is becoming increasingly clear that the principles of restorative justice can be used, as the editors say, outside the formal criminal justice system, and this book bears witness to that. Half is about criminal justice, and half about other applications in schools and elsewhere. The contributors reflect the book’s origins among a group at Fresno Pacific University in California, but other chapters come from Bulgaria, Canada, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. How do people experience using restorative practice at work? from Craig Lambert and Rebecca Shipley's article in Resolution: The Goodwin Development Trust is a registered charity situated in the heart of Kingston-upon-Hull (www.goodwintrust.org). Created over fifteen years ago by the residents of the city’s Thornton Estate with the intention of improving local living conditions, the Trust now manages a diverse range of projects. Can bullying be mediated? from Tom Sebok's article at Workplace Bullying Institute: This question has arisen recently because the American Arbitration Association (AAA) and Alternative Dispute Resolution Consortium (ADRC) have recommended that colleges and universities provide mediation as an option for faculty who feel bullied by their colleagues. Workplace bullying as defined by the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI – see below) seems to me to rarely be negotiable - or mediable – especially to those experiencing it. However, based in large part on my involvement in helping establish a restorative justice program at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the late 1990’s, I believe there are two specific practices from that tradition that could be used to facilitate meaningful and potentially even healing encounters in these situations. These practices differ from the more familiar forms of mediation and the conditions required for success are very specific. As a university ombuds I have found mediation is often an effective way to help staff and faculty to manage and/or resolve workplace disputes. Sometimes both people have the same concern(s) and sometimes their concerns differ. But in most disputes I have mediated, both parties seemed to contribute fairly equally to the creation of the dispute. As a result, they could usually participate fairly equally in developing solutions. And agreements they made to resolve their disputes – even when they included relationship issues such as respect, trust, or communication - usually seemed balanced, as well. Brady encourages Magdalene survivors in talks with church from Genevieve Carbery and Patsy McGarry's entries in Irishtimes.com.: Primate of All-Ireland Cardinal Seán Brady has encouraged Magdalene survivors in their efforts to establish dialogue with religious congregations. The cardinal met representatives of advocacy group Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) for two hours at his residence in Armagh on Thursday evening. He said yesterday it was a welcome opportunity to listen to the perspective of the JFM on “the story of the involvement of church, State and society in the former Magdalene laundries”. “By today’s standards much of what happened at that time is difficult to comprehend,” he said. Workplace bullying and restorative justice – how to help the families left behind from Kevin Jones' entry on SafetyAtWorkBlog: A feature article on workplace bullying in The Age newspaper on 10 March 2010 has the additional or secondary benefit of again raising the relevance of “restorative justice” to the issue of occupational safety and health. The main element of the article is the McGregor family who had two children commit suicide over related issues. The son, Stuart McGregor, described as being chronically depressed, was being bullied at work. He confided in his sister, Angela McGregor, over the issues. Angela had been bullied at school. Alannah killed herself. A month later, Stuart followed. UniCredit Group and restorative justice by Dan Van Ness UniCredit Group is a European company whose mission is "to create a new way of banking by thriving to serve our clients with innovative solutions." It has 168,000 employees operating in 10,000 branches in 22 countries in both Eastern and Western Europe. Restorative Justice and Work-Related Death by Dr. Derek R. Brookes This research project was initiated by the Creative Ministries Network (CMN), which is based in Victoria, Australia. CMN have provided grief-support for family members bereaved by work-related death for more than ten years. Their extensive experience found that the grieving process was prolonged and intensified by how the legal system and other agencies dealt with work-related fatalities. In searching for solutions, the agency was inspired to examine restorative justice (RJ), mainly because they had witnessed the healing that resulted from several (self-arranged) meetings between families and company representatives. CMN subsequently applied for a grant from the Legal Services Board of Victoria to explore the feasibility of RJ in this context, and I was contracted as the principal researcher. The project consisted of two parts. The first involved a literature review, which sought to explore and clarify the kind of issues that might be faced in this context. This included addressing: (1) whether it would be fair and reasonable to invite a company director, manager or worker to take responsibility for their part in a work-related death – even where no personal criminal liability has been (or can be) established; (2) whether RJ can provide any distinctive benefits to those affected; and (3) how best to situate RJ vis-à-vis the legal process. Brookes, Derek. 2009. Restorative Justice and Work–Related Death: Consultation Transcripts. St. Kilda: Creative Ministries Network. This document is the companion volume to Restorative Justice and Work-Related Death: Consultation Report (Creative Ministries Network, 2009). It contains the full transcripts of the interviews upon which the analysis in that Report was based. For an explanation of its contents and purpose, please see Section A. of the Report. (excerpt) Brookes, Derek. 2009. Restorative Justice and Work–Related Death: Consultation Report. St. Kilda: Creative Ministries Network. This Report is part of a wider project that aims to explore the feasibility of a restorative justice service in the context of work-related deaths in Victoria. This section provides an overview of the Report and the way in which it has developed. (excerpt) Brookes, Derek. 2008. Restorative Justice and Work‐Related Death: A Literature Review. St. Kilda: Creative Ministries Network. This literature review is the first stage of a project funded by the Legal Services Board to consider “Can restorative justice better heal bereaved families and workplace grief after a work‐related death, and contribute to improve workplace safety?” Restorative justice could be answer to doping problem from Kurt Streeter's column in the LA Times sports section: We've tried blame. We've tried shame. We've tried hard punishment. But on the doping-in-sports front, we're making very little real progress. Suspicion still reigns. Chemists remain ahead of the testers. Every other week there's a new bust. We've hit a wall. There are the athletes who get caught and then, invariably, smile and smirk, duck and dodge, taking as little responsibility as possible. There are those, like me, who feel moral outrage -- that altering the body this way should never be condoned. Our voices are growing faint. There are the hordes who've begun to tune out the whole issue despite feeling, deep in the gut, that something is really wrong: that our games, and by extension society, have been tarnished by widespread doping. Let's try a new approach. It's time to seek higher ground: accountability, responsibility -- and yes, forgiveness.... Aquino, Karl and Goodstein, Jerry. And restorative justice for all: Redemption, forgiveness, and reintegration in organizations. We explore the topic of restorative justice in organizations. The tradition of restorative justice directs attention to the aftermath of wrongdoing. We highlight three ways offenders (making amends), victims (extending forgiveness), and organizations (fostering reintegration) restore justice in the workplace. Our paper concludes with questions for future research and inquiry. (author's abstract) . Extending the horizon of business ethics: restorative justice and the aftermath of unethical behavior. We call for business ethics scholars to focus more attention on how individuals and organizations respond in the aftermath of unethical behavior. Insight into this issue is drawn from restorative justice, which moves beyond traditional approaches that emphasize retribution or rehabilitation to include restoring victims and other affected parties, reintegrating offenders, and facilitating moral repair in the workplace. We review relevant theoretical and empirical work in restorative justice and develop a conceptual model that highlights how this perspective can enhance theory and empirical research in business ethics. We specifically identify topic areas that we believe have particular promise for business ethics scholars to pursue. We close our paper by discussing implications of the restorative justice approach for practicing managers. (author's abstract) Baron, Linda. Fourteen Months in a FEMA Field Office: A Special Kind of Community Mediation. Mediating in FEMA was nothing like the court, community, and agency-based programs that I was familiar with. There were no intake forms, no dedicated mediation rooms, no established protocols or procedures, and no one knew much about mediation and conflict resolution. In most mediation programs, mediation is an alternative to something – an alternative to litigation, prosecution, investigation, or some other kind of more formal process. In FEMA, when workplace disputes become intolerable, someone is usually “released” (i.e., sent home). That person may eventually be deployed to another disaster, and might even find himself working next to the same person he had a conflict with in the last disaster. One of our tasks, as in any workplace mediation program, was to facilitate more satisfactory resolution of conflicts both for the present situation, and for t he future. (excerpt) Fitzgerald, Maureen. Corporate Circles: Transforming Conflict and Building Trusting Teams. Corporate conflict costs organizations millions of dollars in lost productivity, increased turnover and litigation. This book provides a step-by-step technique for creating conversations that resolve conflict and build trusting relations. In a Corporate Circle, teams come together in a confidential and candid conversation. Corporate Circles enable organizations to: 1) transform conflict into collaboration; 2) build trusting teams and boost morale; 3) repair damaged work relations; 4) enhance individual empathy and accountability; and 5) prevent future conflict. (publisher's abstract). Costello, Bob and O'Connell, Terry. Restorative Practices in the Workplace This presentation provides a practical insight into the use of restorative practices in workplaces. It will show how restorative practices, when located within a sound relational framework, have the capacity to change the way workplaces deal with those tensions which potentially, undermine mutual trust and cooperation. Given that we spend so much of our time at work, we need to be conscious of what builds effective workplace relationships. Modeling restorative practices in all our workplace interactions - informally or formally - will make a positive contribution to relationships because their emphasis is directed at satifying the principles of fair process. Individuals are then likely to feel valued, and contribute in constructive and responsive ways. For supervisors and managers, restorative approaches around tensions and workplace difficulties can provide the sort of modelling which engenders trust and commitment. It also provides ways of identifying and resolving early, those difficulties which historically have the potential to escalate. Author's abstract Reynolds, Carl.. "Workplace mediation." While there are varying emphases among different people in defining mediation, Reynolds holds mediation to be a process in which a neutral third party assists contending parties to achieve their own resolution of their dispute. In the United Kingdom, mediation has increasingly been extended into the workplace. Relating this development to limitations of traditional grievance and disciplinary procedures, Reynolds summarizes the emergence of mediation in the workplace. He then uses specific examples to show actual schemes for workplace mediation. The chapter also includes recommendations for setting up a workplace mediation system. Noonan, Francis. The ACAS approach to employment dispute resolution With respect to the United Kingdom, Noonan observes that the current approach of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) to employment dispute resolution is rooted in employer-trade union interactions in the nineteenth century. ACAS exists to offer neutral, third party services to prevent and resolve workplace disputes. In this chapter Noonan details how ACAS provides such services. With this in mind, and using certain case examples, he presents definitions and discussions of matters such as collective and individual conciliation, arbitration, and advisory mediation. Next 13 items » [1] 2 Document Actions RSS feed Send this Print this	A long-time repeat offender describes the impact of meeting with his victims.