Evaluation summary: Evaluation of the federal mediation and conciliation service (Phase I)

From: Employment and Social Development Canada

About the services

The services offer a range of dispute prevention and relationship development assistance to help employers and unions prevent and manage workplace disputes, foster smooth negotiations of collective agreements, and thereby establish cooperative labour relationships.

Key findings

The demand for dispute prevention services increased by 76% between fiscal years 2015 to 2016 and 2016 to 2017.

Strengths

• The services improved communication between unions and employers, and thereby facilitated negotiations of collective agreements and contributed to improving their relationships.
• The services helped parties resolve grievances, and better prevent and manage workplace conflict.
• The neutrality, experience, knowledge, and professionalism of mediators/conciliators who facilitated the services contributed to high quality services.

Recommendations

1. Further explore the promotion of dispute prevention services and outreach to potential clients in order to help prevent and reduce uptake of dispute resolution services.
2. Need for clearer accountability and roles and responsibilities between the regional offices and Headquarters in order to support the consistent and efficient management of services across the country.
3. Continue to improve data collection, and monitoring and reporting of activities and expected outcomes related to Dispute prevention services.

The full Evaluation of the dispute prevention and relationship development services is now available.