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Description: Information, tools, methods and software needed for the in-class negotiations exercise are described by Prof. Cutcher-Gershenfeld.
Instructor: Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld
Welcome. You are about to do something very special, which is to negotiate the future of work. This video is designed to help you know what you need to know to navigate the software and the tools and methods to help you be successful in this process. What you see on the screen are a series of slides. We'll spend more time with some, less with others. All of them will be available to you on the course website.
Here's what you need to know at the beginning. Once you agree to be part of this negotiations, we want you to sign up and we want you to commit. Because in the negotiations there will be yourself and three or four other people in appropriate roles, and they'll all be depending on you to stay through to agreement. And, frankly, that's how you'll all learn.
What are the roles? The roles in the negotiation match key stakeholders in society. Labor, management, government, and education. And essentially, each of you will be taking on one of these roles-- they'll be assigned through the course platform-- and that will tell you who you're going to represent in figuring out the future of work.
Now, once you're assigned to your role, you'll come to the website platform for this negotiation. That's what you see on the screen here. It, again, reiterates what are the different roles in the exercise and gives you some background about the assignment. And then for all four of the roles-- there's two here and two more-- you'll see some additional information to help you know what you need to know to be effective in your role.
You'll see there's a Next button-- I just checked it-- that will move you on to the next screen, which is where you start to fill out some of the key information we need. There's different universities that are participating in this. Check which one you're coming from. You will be assigned a group number which you want to assign. And then there's other demographic information that you'll fill out on education, whether you've been a member of a union, age, and other factors. They're all required except the gender item which is optional.
But again, once you finish filling out those different items, you'll click Next and you go on to a screen that now asks you to tell us about your preferences or priorities before negotiations begins. You'll see that there's five different issues about workforce capability, all of which could be subjects of negotiation, and we want you to rank order them from your top priority to your second, third, fourth, and fifth. No ties here. You have to pick one, two, three, four or five for each of the five items.
There's also some questions about representation, about organizational performance, about compensation and rewards and incentives for managers, as well as work family kinds of issues. All of these are questions that indicate your priorities going in, and, frankly, that get you thinking about what's at stake as you think about the future of work.
Finally, before we go on to the next screen, in each of the five big categories-- each of which had five sub questions-- we want you to rank order those in terms of what's important in the role that you're playing. And again, you'll press Next and go on to the next screen. Here there's a couple of short attitude questions about cooperation and competition. Again, these will be quick and they give us your attitudes before we begin the bargaining.
That's the setup. Now we're getting ready to bargain. You'll see that there's a slide that tells you and a set of materials about preparation. The key thing about preparation is to not just think about your own priorities, and frankly, your underlying interests, but to think about the priorities and the interest-- what's really at stake-- for the people in the other roles. And so the preparation materials will get you up to speed on moving through it quickly. But there's a lot here to read that will help you.
In negotiations, we say the three things that are most important are preparation, preparation and preparation. Just like in real estate, location, location, and location. This time is time that's well spent.
At this point now you've committed to a bargain, you've got your role, you've done your preparation, and we're ready to begin negotiations. I'm going to say a little bit about the negotiations and then we're going to talk about what happens afterwards. You'll see that there's a link to the settlement form-- which I'll show you in a minute, but there's also, I'm sorry. There's also a page that's not on here but that will come on your screen that will let you print out all of your preparation choices either in a PDF or in a printed document so that you've got that in front of you.
When it comes to the actual bargaining, I'm going to just give you a very simple example. Let's say in the opening statement-- and you'll all make opening statements-- and this is, of course, virtual negotiations so you'll be writing it out online for the others in your group to see-- the folks who are in the worker's role might say, there ought to be more government grants for skills training. The person in the government role may say, we're willing to provide some funding but only in areas that are skill shortages in society. Management might say, yes, but the grant should be to the employer since they know what the skills are not just to the individuals. The education providers say, this needs to be part of an integrated education system and so these funds for curriculum development ought to come to the educational institutions so that they can provide the new training that's needed.
Government may say, that's all great but, we need to have a funding mechanism. Let's say, $.01 per hour for people that work. Management, as you see here, might say, well, we're education providers so we should be able to get development funds too. Ultimately, the management, the workers, and the education providers might come together and say, we need to provide governance and insight and input into this government initiative. And together they might then outline what an agreement is.
But as you can see, there's a series of iterative proposals and counter proposals that are all part of the negotiations. And in the end, we're not looking for a simple sentence, we had an agreement on government funded education. We're really looking for two or three paragraphs that says who does what, what are they agreeing to, how will it be funded, and what are the outcomes involved.
Now, we've done this many times, and it turns out this issue-- support for worker training-- is a common issue that people pick. We want you to push the envelope about what's needed in the future of work, so we're going to say that at least for your first two agreements they cannot be agreements that are on this issue of government funded education, but on other issues that are among the many 25 issues that we've highlighted in five categories. And then if you want to come back to this as part of a package, great. But the point is, push the envelope, do something new.
Once you have an agreement you'll then follow the URL to a screen that looks like what you see here. It says it's part two. And again, it'll ask you what group number you're at, what institution are you doing this. And then you'll find that there's a question about what role are you in, how many people are part of this agreement, and what were their roles? So obviously, if you are an education institution, you would check management, labor, and federal government and leave education blank on question five.
But at that point you go to the next screen and this is your chance to indicate what you actually agreed to. You'll click, let's say, fair treatment and a screen will open up saying, write into this what you agreed upon. This is important. Each of you will be entering the agreement separately. So if there's four people in the negotiations, there will be four entries of the text. It's perfectly OK for you to each cut and splice the same language.
But the key thing-- and by the way, if you put in different language, that's evidence that it might not be a very stable agreement. But the point is, you each put in your language because we also ask you to each rate how important is this in terms of your role and how satisfied are you with the process, not just the substance, to get to this agreement. And this way we can hear from each of you in the negotiations. And of course, there's a space for you to say if there's anything else that you want to put.
And that completes the process. There's a link here that will let you come back and enter a second or third agreement. And when you're done-- when you're done-- you will have done something very special which is you will have negotiated an agreement about the future of work. People who are in positions of power and authority are interested to see what comes out of the negotiations in this course. We will try to sum up the agreements and look for insights and lessons around which there might be the kind of alignment that could actually change things in society and ensure that the institutions of work are better designed to serve the needs of yourself and others in the future generations. Thank you very much.