Industrial relations training
Businesses urged to rebuild lost capabilities in employee relations; Interview with Steve Webster, Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution.
A generation of HR professionals has grown up with limited experience of industrial relations. Declining trade union membership and years of cooperative employee relations have meant that core skills in collective bargaining, consultation and dispute resolution have steadily declined across many organisations.
That could soon change. The government’s forthcoming Employment Rights Bill is expected to strengthen the role of trade unions and expand collective consultation rights, bringing renewed attention to employee relations capability.
Steve Webster, from the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR), says the shift could expose gaps in organisational readiness: ‘For many HR teams, formal collective consultation has become a rarity. The new legislation may reintroduce that reality, and organisations will need to invest again in the skills to manage it constructively.’
CEDR has spent more than 30 years developing workplace mediation and conflict management training. Steve Webster joins Learning News to discuss how these capabilities can be reintroduced and why investment in employee relations training should once again become a strategic priority.
Programme links
Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution
Programme in association with MAAS Marketing.