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Q&A
Discussion on OATH's mediation programs and potential for expansion
2:29:06
ยท
3 min
Council Member Restler inquires about OATH's mediation programs, their effectiveness, and potential for scaling up. Commissioner Rahman explains the current state of mediations for city employees and the public, detailing the evaluation process and the challenges of expanding the program.
- OATH uses post-event surveys to track the effectiveness of mediations and trainings.
- The Center for Creative Conflict Resolution, a team of nine professionals, handles mediations and trainings for city agencies.
- There's interest in scaling up the program, but it would require discussions with various city entities.
Lincoln Restler
2:29:06
Mediations and consultations.
2:29:08
The MMR showed that oath mediations for city employees increased 62% last year and mediations for members of the public are up this year, although still only I think at seven.
2:29:18
Is Oath tracking the results of mediations?
2:29:21
How can we scale up these programs more effectively?
Asim Rahman
2:29:24
So the one second, I do want to look at some data real quick.
2:29:34
Yeah, the mediations for the members of the public, as you pointed out, are in single digits.
2:29:39
So it's hard to kind of really say the percentage increase.
2:29:42
And the mediations for city employees
Lincoln Restler
2:29:45
No, that was the the percentage increase I showed was mentioned was for city employees.
Asim Rahman
2:29:49
Yes, yes.
2:29:50
And so for city employees, we're happy to provide the services out of the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution.
2:29:58
It's a great team of individuals that provides mediations, management training, restorative justice work for all of city government.
2:30:09
And at every city agency they have an ADR coordinator that helps connect with the center to do this type of work.
2:30:16
And we are happy I'm happy as an agency head that every time they go and do a training, even with central staff at city council, that they get called to do more.
2:30:27
So to your question about how are we tracking it, with our mediations and with our trainings, we issue a post event survey a post mediation survey, a post training survey.
2:30:38
And the survey asks questions to help us improve our services.
2:30:43
You know, what went well?
2:30:44
Would you recommend this to someone else?
2:30:46
Was your problem resolved?
2:30:47
So we do have these kind of qualitative surveys that allow us to improve our services.
2:30:54
And the overall takeaway from those surveys has been the work is effective and people like it and they want more of it.
2:30:59
Which gets us to your question about have we thought about scaling it up?
2:31:02
It's a small team of nine professionals who of course leverage the help of the ADR coordinators at every agency.
2:31:09
But nine people, when you compare it to the city's workforce, it's not a lot of folks.
2:31:13
And there's a tremendous amount of good work to be done out there.
2:31:16
And if we can avoid conflicts before they grow using these alternative services, well that helps everyone.
2:31:22
So I have had some internal conversations about what would it look like for this team to be larger.
2:31:32
But those are really all in their infancy stage.
2:31:34
And that would be a much larger discussion that would involve city hall, OMB, city council maybe even to see what would the next version of the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution look like?
Lincoln Restler
2:31:45
Well I think that this council has been supportive of increased efforts to mediate resolutions.
2:31:55
And you know I think if you can share data with us on how you've been successful with city government employees, we should be thinking about how to expand the model and support support more people.
2:32:10
So, know, want to just continue that conversation and explore scaling that up together.