As a professional mediator I’m often asked which courses I would recommend for people wanting to train as workplace mediators. It’s a really tricky one as there are many options and how would you start choosing between them. Plus I don’t have personal experience of the courses other than the one that I did for my own training. Nonetheless I like to help so back in 2012 I thought I’d put together a list of mediation training courses and a paper with some thoughts on factors to consider when making your choice. The courses were ‘full mediation training’, typically involving 5 days of training and mostly with some form of accreditation.
Over the years I have updated my listing intermittently and have just completed the most recent update. It is interesting now to compare the current list with the first one I did 9 years ago. These are my observations:
Suppliers
Pricing
CMC affiliation
It is difficult to assess if anything has changed in terms of course content. I think it is unlikely – apart from one obvious element, online mediation. Given the changes enforced by the pandemic, online mediation is now commonplace compared to 2012 when few suppliers would have been offering it. So training will now incorporate remote delivery of mediation as well as face to face. Likewise, delivery of the training itself is now available at least partly online, though often the assessment element is required to be face to face.
So which training would I recommend? That’s not something I can do as I’ve no personal experience of any of the courses other than my own training with CEDR. What I can say is that there are several good suppliers offering excellent training but they are all slightly different – speak to the suppliers and pick a course that meets your specific needs and with trainers that you feel comfortable with.
If you would like a copy of the list of mediation training courses and the paper on selecting a course feel free to contact us.
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