HR Professionals Use Mediation and Advocacy to Strengthen Trust, Improve Outcomes

Sometimes the biggest business impact an HR leader can make happens in the smallest of interactions. While organizations try to optimize efficiency through metric dashboards, behind the scenes are teams of HR professionals building trust by starting conversations and mediations with employees, or advocating on their behalf. Many of these interactions, like asking a sales team to work through the holidays during peak demand, are problems uniquely reserved for humans with expert relational skills.

Marina Essam, Senior Talent Acquisition and People Operations Officer at global venture builder Ebdaa Digital Technology, is a leader who prioritizes getting these conversations right. Drawing on experience in the real estate industry with Coldwell Banker Stellar, she has seen firsthand how a human touch can succeed where efficiency alone fails. Her belief is that a simple conversation is one of the most effective tools an organization has for building trust and avoiding conflict.

“Sometimes a simple conversation can prevent a much bigger issue. I’ve seen situations where two employees had a misunderstanding, and a short mediation rebuilt their trust and avoided a conflict that could have affected the whole team,” she says, a perspective gained from experience in high-pressure environments where business needs and employee needs were sometimes at opposition. Essam recalls a time when meeting peak demand required sales employees to work through weekends and holidays, which put her in a difficult position. The situation called for a more nuanced, human-centric approach, a tension that has become especially important in the workplace today.

• A tough sell: “The hardest thing in my career was handling situations where employee needs conflicted with our company’s metrics,” Essam shares, adding that building trust through support and incentives is key. “To convince an employee to work on a holiday weekend, I would appeal to them emotionally. A human conversation can go a long way.”

• Having their back: Employees presented with challenging work situations should be reminded they are not alone and have support. “In past scenarios I would support employees by reassuring them that the HR department recognized their effort. I’d tell them we had their back and would support them in front of top management by always mentioning the extra work they were doing,” she recalls. “It was helpful, and it gave them a push to do more.”

• In their corner: Her story makes the case that conversation is a powerful form of risk prevention. By making an effort to provide true relational support, HR can help build the trust needed for organizational stability. Essam’s experience shows how a short mediation can prevent larger conflicts that affect whole teams. For Essam, this advocacy is grounded in a firm ethical stance that HR’s role is to actively mediate between corporate needs and employees’ rights. “HR is not only for the company. Our most important role is to protect employees and their rights. Having the upper hand in a company doesn’t mean you are authorized to take advantage of an employee, to hurt them, or to use your authority to push them beyond their energy,” Essam says.

To fulfill this function as employee advocate, Essam says that there are core skills HR leaders must develop. In an era where technology and AI are handling more administrative tasks and changing the nature of work, humans hold even more responsibility and value as HR professionals when it comes to sensitively balancing the needs of both the organization and its people.

• The core curriculum: “The most important thing is to listen to employees very carefully and put yourself in their place,” she shares. “We are the mediator between the company and the employee, and we have to create equality between them. We have to be good listeners. We have to be very patient and very kind.” She adds that “an excellent HR professional is a polite person who thoughtfully considers the employee’s rights and the company’s needs.”

Holding this emotional responsibility requires balance. To avoid employee burnout, Essam stresses the importance of rest and organization as tools for sustaining the role, especially when the work itself is often invisible and ongoing. But ultimately, she points to leadership as the key factor in building better human-led support systems.

In her experience, the difference is measurable. “My productivity tripled with a good manager,” she says. “A great manager is someone who creates the conditions for teams to do their best work.” That distinction gets to the heart of the role HR increasingly plays. As systems and metrics continue to optimize for efficiency, the most meaningful impact often happens in moments that can’t be tracked on a dashboard. These are the interactions that build trust, prevent risk, and ultimately create the best outcomes for employees and organizations.