Negotiation Skills for Effective Collective Bargaining

The promotion of collective bargaining at all levels is key to productive, equitable and stable employment relations. While an enabling regulatory framework and other measures to promote collective bargaining are essential, the effectiveness of collective bargaining is often hampered by the poor negotiating skills of the bargaining parties. They may adopt a negotiation style that does not allow them to reach satisfactory outcomes. More often than not, the negotiation skills of the parties are confrontational and undermine trust which is the foundation of sound labour relations. This course on negotiation skills provided those involved in negotiations a firsthand knowledge and practice of negotiation skills and techniques. The course aimed to develop participants’ capacities to improve their negotiation skills and therefore to reach satisfactory outcomes for their organizations.

OBJECTIVES

The course aimed to develop participants’ knowledge and understanding of consensus-building approaches to conflict management and dispute resolution. Emphasis was placed on how to move from a traditional style of adversarial negotiating to a negotiation style that allows mutual gains and strengthened relationships among parties.

CONTENT

• Identifying typical mistakes made by negotiators

• The conflict dynamic

• How conflict develops into a dispute

• Different approaches to dispute resolution

• Outcomes in negotiation

• Different approaches to negotiation

• What positional negotiation looks like

• A problem-solving model

• The anatomy of needs-based negotiation

• Stages and needs-based negotiation

• The negotiators’ dilemma

• Costs and benefits of different styles of negotiating

• How to maximize joint value and achieve optimum outcomes

• The significance of alternatives to a negotiated agreement

• Reality testing

• How to open up a zone of possible agreement

• The mandating dynamic

• Preparation for negotiation

• Behaviours of effective negotiators

• Working with interests and needs

• Reframing

• Extracting needs

• Finding mutual gains outcomes

• The use of questions

• Generating options and brainstorming

• Managing your own emotions and responding effectively to the emotions of others

• Helping people save face

• Negotiating with difficult people

RESULT

Participants acquired a better understanding of the collective bargaining process and they improved their abilities in negotiating collective agreements. The content of the course has been designed in such a way that it can be transposed by the participants into their reality. Appropriate teaching tools and methods were used for this purpose in line with the Turin Centre's approach to learning. To this end, the training was learner-centred and based on experience and learning. The sharing and creation of knowledge was encouraged and much of the discussions and analyses took place in group work.

NUMBER OF HOURS: 35