ELR covers how disputes get resolved short of litigation and how an employer builds the systems that prevent them. Two key concepts drive this unit: ADR types, and the types and development of compliance and ethics programs.
The two ADR types
The BASK lists ADR under ELR as mediation and arbitration. That is the pair.
- Litigation and appeal are court processes, the thing ADR replaces.
- Negotiation and lockout pair a bargaining activity with a labor-dispute tactic the BASK handles separately under strikes and lockouts.
- Counseling and demotion are progressive-discipline steps, a different key-concept grouping.
Mediation is the fit when both parties want to keep working together and no facts have been established. It reaches a resolution the parties own, rather than an adjudicated outcome. Issuing warnings to both sides disciplines conduct nobody has proven; transferring one person suppresses the dispute; handing the decision to the manager who is already a party to the escalation abandons the ADR option entirely.
Compliance and ethics programs
The BASK lists types and development of compliance and ethics programs as an ELR key concept. The word that matters is development. A code of conduct sitting on a shelf is a document, not a program.
A program has communication, training and a reporting channel. Republishing the code by email with an acknowledgment signature is one-way communication that leaves managers untrained and employees with nowhere to raise a concern. An ethics clause in offer letters reaches new hires only. Routing concerns to outside counsel handles matters one at a time and builds nothing.
Trap: compliance and ethics programs are not Corporate Social Responsibility content, not a behavioral competency, and not a subset of electronic self-service.
The international baseline
For employment standards across countries, anchor on the International Labour Organization rights and standards the BASK names. Exporting the U.S. handbook unchanged, letting each country manager improvise, or waiting for the first complaint all leave the multinational without a baseline.
Carry this in: mediation and arbitration, and a program means communication plus training plus a channel.