BEING FACE to face with a class of 55 teenagers in a foreign land, who didn't really want to be in school anyway, was a culture shock - on both sides - admits Susan Clews.

Compared to that, dealing with some tough trade union bosses was often an easy ride, she smiles.

The 15-year-olds were in a rural school in Jamaica, where the boys were destined to be farm workers and the girls to be mums. They weren't really interested in the maths and English which Susan was out there to teach. She had accompanied husband Nigel, who was teaching geography at the same school, on a 12-month exchange programme.

But the skills that have put her at the top of management in the conciliation service ACAS served her well.

She absolutely refused to use corporal punishment, such as the cane, which was common practice among other members of staff, to maintain order.

Instead, a calm and practical person, she set about talking to the youngsters and listening to what they had to say. It helped her gain their trust and respect, and she aimed to tailor-make the lessons to capture their interest.

"If you want people to do things, they have to want to do it," she says.

Fifteen years later, she is still in touch with some of the students in that class.

Her success is testament to the persuasive powers and wisdom of Solomon needed to work the tightrope of mediating in industrial relations, often bringing two apparently immovable objects together in a peace deal.

Since her days as a student of geography at Manchester University, she has had an interest in employment issues and their impact on people.

She recalls as a youngster doing quite a lot of babysitting, where some of her charges would often get into fights. It was up to her to separate them and restore harmony.

"I am a calm person, and it takes a lot to get me riled," says Susan, who has an eight- year-old daughter, Lucy.

We are talking in her office, which overlooks Manchester's Albert Square, to where she commutes from her home in Huddersfield.

She was born in Macclesfield and educated at the, then, Wilmslow Grammar School. After university Susan got her first job at the Department of Employment working on job creation programmes in Yorkshire and setting up youth training schemes.

With traditional manufacturing bases crumbling, unemployment was very high and small communities were left to cope with the consequences. "I found it really satisfying to be able to do something that made a difference, and to be able to help youngsters," she says.

She moved on to work in education programmes, then at Manpower Services for a couple of years.

And when her husband got a place on a teaching exchange programme, she went with him to teach at the same country school.

Living in rural Jamaica with no mains water and not even a phone, life was very basic. A weekly trip to the city was a great treat. But she enjoyed the experience.

When the couple returned to the UK in 1991, she joined ACAS in Yorkshire.

Disputes

The conciliation and advisory service had been set up in 1974 when big industrial disputes were rarely out of the headlines.

But times have changed. Last year, was the first time in years where ACAS was involved in a number of public sector disputes of national significance - like the Fire Service strikes.

However, complaints to employment tribunals have fallen - in line with a key goal of the service which aims to create better relations between employer and employee.

Though ACAS is probably best known for settling large-scale disputes, one of its major aims is to prevent these before they start. In fact only 10 per cent of ACAS staff are involved in the resolution of large-scale workplace conflicts and the vast majority of its everyday work is with individual employees and small firms.

Susan said: "Prevention is better than cure, and that's the message we want to get across. We are working very hard to help stop disputes starting in the first place."

It does so through a wealth of support services such as its helpline, website and training events.

Nationally, ACAS helpline operators deal with over 750,000 calls a year, and the most frequently asked questions are about discipline and dismissal.

In the north west, where there are around 250,000 employers, the helpline gets around 100,000 calls a year.

The ACAS service employs 100 staff in the region, including 40 who conciliate in tribunal cases. It deals with around 300 collective disputes and 10,000 individual cases of conciliation in a year. Around 77 per cent of complaints to employment tribunals go no further than conciliation.

Of critical importance is good communication, says Susan. It is often lack of communication, and misunderstandings, that allow quite small matters to escalate into major conflict, she says.

But ACAS aims to be the first port of call not the "last chance saloon".

One of the reasons the government wants to cut down the numbers of disputes going to tribunal is quite simply cost - much of which falls on the taxpayer.

ACAS recognises small firms can often find it difficult to keep up to date with good employment practices and employment legislation, and has been developing services to help these companies.

When problems do arise, the trick is to pour oil on the troubled waters. "Our job is to get each of the parties to LISTEN to each other," says Susan, who says the key attributes of a conciliator are to be a good listener and have unbiased judgement. She said: "They also need to be patient."

After working as a conciliator, she became assistant director for Yorkshire and Humberside region. She then spent a year at the London headquarters of the service, where she led a project team which undertook a strategic review of the organisation, which led to changes in its focus. She came to Manchester as north west regional director.

She has been at the sharp end of settling disputes.

One of her toughest cases involved a supermarket distribution company. "There was a long history of adversarial conflict, and a real breakdown in trust between the two sides. It got to the stage where we were called in every year.

"You have to try and help each side see things from the others point of view, but positions get entrenched," she said.

Another uneasy peace was reached between the two sides in this case, but after the dispute, she spent some time working with them to try and help build bridges. ACAS has not been called in for a couple of years now, which must be counted as a success.

"In our case, we don't want repeat business!" she says.