Interest-Based Bargaining
Labor-Management Facilitation
For industry, services, healthcare, schools and public agencies, labor management relations are often a complex mixture of both clashing and shared concerns. Labor and management each are responsible to their own constituencies, yet both are dependent on the success of the operation. Each side possesses information and resources the other side needs in order to get their concerns met. Henderson Woods, LLC assists union and management to build the working relationships and negotiation skills to meet today’s workplace challenges.
Interest-Based Bargaining
Henderson Woods offers training and facilitation services for interest-based bargaining (IBB). For those who are familiar with the process, we recommend a one-day refresher to review the process and sharpen skills. For parties who are not familiar with the process, a two-day, off-site training is recommended. Our training lays a foundation of skills and shared expectations that enables parties to proceed on their own. In other cases, we have worked as a neutral facilitator to guide the process and keep the parties on track without giving direction on the substance of the issue.
IBB, sometimes called mutual gains negotiation or win-win, enables the parties to frame issues from both perspectives, access information, build shared competency, and work together to craft solutions that both find acceptable. Power is used to drive the other side to the negotiations table, but not to impose positions. The process facilitates communication, information-sharing, problem-solving and innovation. It does not require trust, but it does ask each side to recognize the legitimacy of the other side's concerns and to act reliably and with integrity, without tricks. When used in a responsible and grounded manner, IBB helps parties with conflicting interests identify acceptable solutions and build relationship in the process. IBB keeps the parties involved and in control of the negotiating progress.
We understand the workplace. We understand the negotiations. We understand union-management dynamics.
Labor-Management Facilitation
Building union-management relationships capable of handling the hard negotiations as well as responding to situations that benefit from working together is a delicate and fragile matter. We provide a full range of specialized services from relationship building off-sites to interest-based bargaining and neutral facilitation. In order to maintain our neutrality, we work at the agreement of both parties. We partner with leadership from both labor and management in the design of services and follow-up support.
