Negotiate to Win for Labor Relations Professionals

Collective Bargaining for the 21st Century

Skillful collective bargaining is essential in today's hyper-competitive global economy.  Substandard labor negotiating can significantly increase costs, reduce profits, damage morale, limit opportunities, tarnish reputations, and more. These days, even a single poorly negotiated labor agreement can have ruinous consequences for an organization.

In response, Common Ground adapted its award-winning Negotiate to WIN® workshop to the complex, often exasperating, process of collective bargaining. The result:  Negotiate to WIN® for Labor Relations Professionals. Using Common Ground's exclusive "consultative negotiating" style, Negotiate to WIN for Labor Relations Professionals links trust-building, interest-based bargaining, and strategic planning to help labor negotiators reach long-term, mutually profitable agreements.

Who Should Attend Negotiate to WIN for Labor Relations Professionals?

Negotiate to WIN for Labor Relations Professionals is designed for bargaining team members, managers, strategists, public relations and media specialists, cost and issue analysts, labor counsel, contract specialists, and anyone else in the collective bargaining process. Team attendance is encouraged.  Negotiate to WIN is not a prerequisite.

Our Methodology

Negotiate to WIN for Labor Relations Professionals sustains an intense, "high-immersion" training environment for maximum participation and learning. Instructional methods include multimedia, lecture, group discussion, coaching, diagnostic tests and evaluations, simulations, and other interactive techniques.  During the program, students are regularly challenged to demonstrate what they've learned through generic and customized bargaining simulations.

Session Length

Negotiate to WIN for Labor Relations Professionals is typically a two-day program. However, program length can be adjusted to fit your requirements, from under one hour to two or more days.

Our Instructors

Common Ground's instructors for Negotiate to WIN for Labor Relations Professionals are experienced and respected labor negotiators. Each is an active practitioner as well as an exceptional teacher with considerable training experience and first-rate platform skills.  Please click here for information on our instructors.

Tailoring

Many firms promise tailored programs but deliver the same tired old materials.  Common Ground is different. When we say tailored, we mean it. We work with you to ensure that Negotiate to WIN for Labor Relations Professionals thoroughly and specifically addresses your organization's priorities and concerns.  We interview your people and (confidentially, of course) we learn your business, who you are, what you do, how you do it, where your industry stands and where you stand in your industry, what your short- and long-term objectives are, what circumstances your negotiators face, and who your target audience will be. With this information in hand, we prepare unique training materials for you.

Tailored case studies, lifelike scenarios that students can instantly relate to, are the best way to clarify, validate and reinforce classroom concepts, and make them immediately transferable to the workplace. Common Ground is unsurpassed when it comes to the creation of unique, client-specific exercises. At no additional charge, we work in partnership with you to develop convincingly realistic scenarios that will excite and inform your attendees.

Highlights 

• Governing legislation 

• The union perspective

• Contracting-out and mid-term contract changes

• Facility closures and successorships

• Trade protection

• Technological change and innovation

• Alternative dispute resolution and interest-based bargaining

• Labor-management partnerships

• Tips for doing your pre-negotiation "homework"

• Developing your negotiation plan and contingencies

• Choosing and preparing the bargaining team

• Gathering and analyzing data

• Developing a bargaining strategy

• Setting the tone for productive bargaining

• Communicating while negotiating

• Strategies, tactics, tips, and techniques

• Negotiating pre-agreements on ground rules and meeting schedules

• Packaging and repackaging offers 

• Linking issues and solutions

• Breaking impasses

• Drafting contract language

• Costing the contract

• Developing an implementation plan

• Communicating with stakeholder groups

• Gaining ratification

• Media management

• Contract administration

Confidentiality

In all aspects of their work with Common Ground, clients are assured of complete confidentiality. Our commitment to discretion and privacy encourages clients to give us access to the information we need to customize Negotiate to WIN for Labor Relations Professionals for maximum participation and learning. Upon request, Common Ground will be pleased to formalize this promise with a Nondisclosure Agreement.

Participant Materials

Participants receive a variety of valuable in-class and take-home handouts and tools, including checklists, case studies, samples, guides, pocket reference cards, a personal action planner, and Negotiate to WIN for Labor Relations Professionals' outstanding Manual (designed as a practical, desktop reference for continued use long after the session).

On-Site Requirements

We ask that you provide the training facility, an LCD projector, a screen, a flip chart and markers, and above all, enthusiastic attendees who sincerely want to improve their negotiating skills! Optional items such as sign-in sheets, evaluation forms, writing materials, name cards and badges, and diplomas are supplied by clients.

Our Guarantee

Our guarantee is very straightforward. We think it says a lot about the effectiveness of Common Ground training. We guarantee that within two weeks after Negotiate to WIN for Labor Relations Professionals, you'll recover the price of the session through better negotiating. If not, we'll refund your money.

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