ID261 From Conflict to Collaboration

The Idea

I propose establishing a Keele Restorative Justice Clinic: a trained, cross-institutional pool of colleagues drawn from across faculties, professional services, management, and staff who are equipped to facilitate restorative conversations when workplace relationships begin to break down. The aim is to help colleagues resolve conflict early, before it escalates into formal HR or union processes. 

Grounded in established theory and evidence, restorative justice provides a structured process for establishing the facts, exploring different perspectives, improving communication, and helping those involved reach mutually acceptable solutions. Unlike conventional conflict-resolution procedures, it places equal emphasis on repairing the working relationship, enabling colleagues to move forward constructively rather than simply bringing a dispute to a close. 

Participation would be entirely voluntary and offered before formal pre-grievance and grievance procedures, making the service a genuinely preventative, relationship-centred, and de-escalatory intervention. 

Why This Idea Should Be Considered

Conflict is an inevitable part of working in complex, high-pressure organisations such as universities. Much of it begins with misunderstandings, communication breakdowns, or other issues that are resolvable if addressed early. When left unaddressed, however, disagreements can become personalised, relationships deteriorate, and formal processes become increasingly likely. 

Like most universities, Keele relies on pre-grievance and grievance procedures supported by HR and the Union. While these processes are essential when formal intervention is required, they are primarily designed to investigate and resolve disputes, not to repair damaged working relationships. As a result, colleagues may complete the process with the underlying relationship still fractured, making productive collaboration difficult long after the case has closed. 

The costs of unresolved conflict are substantial. First, there is the human cost: increased stress, anxiety, and reduced wellbeing for those directly involved, with tensions often affecting wider teams. Second, there is the operational cost: time diverted into managing disputes, reduced collaboration, lower productivity, sickness absence, and, in some cases, the loss of experienced colleagues and the associated costs of recruitment and onboarding. Third, there is the cultural cost: damaged trust, lower morale, and a workplace culture in which unresolved conflict undermines engagement and collaboration. 

A Keele Restorative Justice Clinic would address these challenges by providing a voluntary, early-intervention service focused not only on resolving disputes but on repairing working relationships before formal escalation becomes necessary. It would complement, rather than replace, existing HR procedures by filling a critical gap in the University's approach to workplace conflict.

How We Would Implement This Idea

Implementation would begin by recruiting and training a cohort of volunteer colleagues from across faculties, professional services, and management in restorative justice practice, drawing on established external training providers and the existing evidence base. These trained facilitators would form the Keele Restorative Justice Clinic. 

The clinic would operate as a clearly signposted, confidential, and voluntary service that staff and their managers could access at an early stage, before formal pre-grievance or grievance procedures are initiated. A straightforward referral and triage process would ensure appropriate case selection, while maintaining confidentiality, impartiality, and clear boundaries for cases that require formal HR processes. The clinic should support several entry points, not just line manager referral: self-referral by any party in the conflict, peer or colleague referral (with consent of those involved), and referral via HR, the Union, or another manager where the direct line manager is party to the conflict. I'll revise the implementation section to specify this. 

The clinic would be positioned explicitly as an early-intervention service that complements, rather than replaces, existing HR and Union procedures, offering colleagues an opportunity to resolve conflict and repair working relationships before formal escalation becomes necessary. Task and relationship conflict are worth distinguishing, but they are not always cleanly separable. Unresolved task conflict can become personalised over time, and both can coexist. The clinic focuses on relationship conflict, including interpersonal breakdown, communication difficulties, damaged trust, or task disagreements that have become personalised. Pure task or idea disagreements, where the working relationship remains intact, fall outside scope. Triage should assess whether the issue remains primarily about the task or has shifted towards how people are treating or perceiving one another. Mixed cases should be considered in scope where the dispute includes a clear interpersonal element. 

Joint restorative dialogue requires the consent of all parties, but this should not be the only pathway. Individual consultation can have value even where the other party does not wish to participate. Where one party approaches the clinic and the other does not consent to a joint session, triage could offer an individual consultation to help the person reflect on their own perceptions, consider the other party’s perspective, and explore constructive ways of communicating. This also leaves open the possibility of a joint session later if willingness changes. Triage should therefore distinguish between individual consultation and a joint restorative process, rather than treating the absence of mutual consent as a reason to close the case entirely. 

Implementation would begin with a pilot involving a small cohort of trained facilitators and a defined number of referrals. Routine feedback would be gathered from all participants to evaluate satisfaction, relationship outcomes, and opportunities for improvement, creating an evidence base to inform wider institutional rollout. 

What Success Would Look Like

Success would be demonstrated by a sustainable pool of trained restorative justice practitioners and a trusted, well-used clinic that colleagues feel confident accessing at an early stage of conflict. 

Measurable outcomes would include a significant proportion of workplace conflicts being resolved through restorative processes without progressing to formal grievance procedures; high levels of participant satisfaction with the fairness and effectiveness of the process; and, most importantly, evidence that damaged working relationships have been repaired rather than disputes simply being concluded. 

Over time, success would also be reflected in fewer formal grievance cases, shorter and less costly dispute-resolution processes, improved staff wellbeing, stronger team functioning, and a more collaborative institutional culture. Routine evaluation of every restorative intervention would enable the University to learn systematically from participants' experiences, ensuring the service continues to improve and providing evidence that outcomes are acceptable to all parties involved.  

This emphasis on learning from participants would close an important evidence gap by measuring not only whether cases conclude, but whether the process genuinely resolves conflict and restores effective working relationships