At the beginning
Solutions for how to reach a win-win result in the negotiation for raise between employers and employees extremely vary case by case. Nevertheless, there are always some general tactics, which employers could take to facilitate this kind of result. In this topic, members of the GIVE Team illustrate their unique ideas.
Impractical Tactics
Ivy: Actually both employers and employees are in the same boat.
During countless negotiations on raises, welfare, and promotion in my banking career, I noticed that in most cases management might misunderstand the relationship between personal matters and motivation of raise requirement. Employers hold the opinion that the raise requirements are “troubles” they encounter.
The situation is defined by Leigh L Thomason in his book of The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator as “False Conflict, occurs when people believe that their interests are incompatible with the other party’s interests when, in fact, they are not.”
Behaviors that employers attached personal matters to the negotiation when disputes arise would drive both parities away from their initial objective, and highlight individual interests which incompatible with those of the organization. Eventually some critical factors lead to solutions for the sounds-like problem would be put aside and ignored.
Garnet: Cannot avoid it? So be prepared!
Employers, however, are not always in the advantage position of raise negation. For some key staffs, it is another story. Indeed, the management are afraid of facing raise-or-leave situation involved staffs who work in key positions or control critical resources, like manager of Merchandiser Recruitment in my company. If they leave, they could take a group of merchandisers to my competitors. In addition, employers would also suffer from the long adaptive period during which the new manager has to pass.
Of course I can give him or her a favorable raise, but beside the compromise that is not the better way at all, to reach the win-win result, which make both parties benefit, employers should improve their internal training system to hold sufficient human capital resource. Moreover, through decentralized job design and structure optimizing, employers could avoid the recourse concentrating in individual. Furthermore, employers should also drive professional staffs transfer their works to printed procedures and workflows, making those experience can be learned by others. In one word, all those recommendations are working for improve employers’ capacity to facilitate the negotiation to a win-win result.
Vivian: Offer the very issues others needed for exchange.
Employer and
employee usually are in opposed positions in the newspaper and media. Take the Cathay
Pacific Airways for example, the flight attendant union stage several strikes
and make so much inconvenience for travelers around the world. This big news is
on the screen for a long time. After they settle the negotiation, everyone is
happy about that.
The following
factors are things we could not neglect that if we want to have a win-win
negotiation.
1.
False
Conflict
In a labor
strike at the Dow Chemical Company, both union and management preferred the
same wage increase, but neither party realized this fact at the time of the
strike. Employer and employee may need the same thing and they did not know, because
they put them into hostile position already.
2.
Fixed-Pie
Perception
In fact, a fixed-pie perception is very common obstacle
that blocks the way to win-win settlement. Fixed-pie perception may make
negotiators think they are in a zero sum game, and they can only benefit by
pillaging the benefit of the other party. With perception like that,
negotiation would definitely end up with lose-lose. Practical Tactics
Garnet: Believe the pie can be expanded and also make employees believe it, too.
After going back to my family-owned company, which focuses on commercial properties development and operation, I was beginning to touch issues of raise negotiation with employees. When discussing with HR manager, I noticed that someone could critically demonstrate convincible reasons to make management believe they deserve it, but others indeed annoyed us, though we were planning to offer it before they speaking out. In the perspective of employers, I pay attention on the amount of profit and the profitability of the company, as a result, definitely I am willing to control the salary within a certain amount that positively relates to profit. Why I felt annoyed and lose some talents? The reason can be concluded that I did not firmly hold the perception that the pie can be expanded .
Someone who obtained raise was able to demonstrate evidence based on robust growth of his or her effectiveness and to show high potential, making management be confident to the future’s development. Therefore, I was appreciated to reward them. Conversely, someone held evidence that there were staffs in same position with similar workload comparing with him or her, but earning more. Such reasons will lead management directly to the perception of fixed pie, due to absent of deeply understanding of expanding pie, and point that employees were going to take more from profit that management really care about.
Ivy: pay attention on balance interests between organization and employees.
Nowadays I’m on the other side of the negotiations when my career has been advanced to management level, and I begin to deal with raise requests from my subordinates. Indeed it is never easy to satisfy everybody’s preference, nevertheless, I could manage to balance the company’s interests and individual interests in a certain extent.
For instance, one of my staff Tony, who has been working in my department for five years, representing attractive personalities and above average talent in aspects of social networks with colleagues and daily works. Most people, new comers and sophisticates in my department, are willing to work with him, even those who are Tony’s internal competitors, mainly because of his initiative and warm-heart, offering critical assistance in time when others called for.
One day, he suddenly came to my office asking for raise with evidence that there is staff whose salary is higher than his but contribution is less. Definitely it is no doubt that he was a good employee and he has been working well for assignment, excellently completing his own work independently, and devoting his personal time to help other colleagues in completing their tasks. However, the resources he has put in helping other colleagues might weaken his customers relationship development, thus his customers were not giving very high praises on his performance. Eventually, he made less money for the bank than other high-pay colleagues.
As much as he understood the situation, he injected that credits should be given for his hard working and loyalty for the bank. However, in view of the fact that the bank was undergoing restructuring in order to reduce expenditure and harness extended sources of income, such that the rises would be directly related to the performance rather than other externalities. As such I needed to placate Tony, that extra bonus would be given had his job performance would be improved in one month. In fact, we have a monthly panel meeting to discuss bonus distribution in order to encourage good performers by giving them bonus if they could make significant progress in sales, what whatever measure for their performance, in a month. Practically, money incentive would have been given for extra customers he would have successfully developed.
Nevertheless, I pointed out that even though the interpersonal relationship was important, it would never be a good idea to act as an unsung hero, when that would have nothing to improve his performance with customers development. As much as he bank wanted to maintain healthy corporate culture, we would weight customer performance heavier than the relationship among colleagues, as it is nevertheless a business on money. Finally, he lined up with my points and argument, and he understood the personal performance was directly effected his income.
If I could not explain why I rejected his request for salary increase from the economic terms and reminded him his own customers and his performance was directly effect his income, he might think that I ignored his contributions to the bank and his colleagues; and as such that would discourage him, and eventually mutual agreement would not be met. The bonus arrangement could really help to encourage him to improve his work performance, also gave him the incentive to focus on the profit sectors, which are inline with our corporate objectives. Also, in order to show our eagerness in supporting him, I promised him to support his work and gave him some help had he followed my directions in pursuing monthly bonus.
In summary, an employers have their responsibilities in balancing the benefits between the corporation and individual staff. Often cases employer and employee have the common objectives, therefore employers should be scrupulous in separating public from private interests and try to find some real reasonable explanations for employees, and help employees harnessing their potential capabilities. Eventually the employees would trust employers and make progresses, and get what they most desired. That is by far the most effective way to tackle the problem on such negotiations. In the cases where employees rejected the advices and were not satisfied, his performance would have been hammered and he would look for other opportunities. In this situation, employers should take into consideration employees’ performance and his contributions to the corporation, then plan other incentives for the employees.
Vivian: Actually employers can make it better.
In this negotiation between employer and employee, first we need to find out do parties have different preferences across negotiation issues . Because parties have different strengths of preference across the negotiation issues, then a win-win negotiation is possible. In this case, what the employer need is employee’s good performance, employer consider ability is proportional to the salary. If one employee gets higher salary, and he must deserve it by providing good performance and profit to the company. Meanwhile, what the employee need is a higher salary same with the rest of the unit heads. So employer and employee have different preferences across this negotiation case, and making an integrative agreement possible.
The following factors are important facilitators that can promote the negotiation to a win-win one from the perspective of the employer.
5. Perspective-Taking
If negotiators can build up a mutual trust relationship with each other and share information about the preference of the negotiation problem, it will greatly improve the possibility of a win-win situation. When employer takes the employee’s perspective, he will notice that employee’s will is not a zero sum game against his benefit. For example, employee gets what he desire for a long time, after that he may work harder to pursue more. Once he works harder, he may bring more profit to the company, and just meet the need of the employer. This facilitator is the especially good to use when negotiating with someone who seems cooperative and trustworthy.
6. Ask Questions about Interests and Priorities
Negotiators who ask the counterparty about their preferences are much more likely to reach integrative agreements than negotiators who do not ask the other party about his or her priorities. When knowing each other’s interests and priorities, the negotiators could avoid the most common error false conflict which may leading a lose-lose agreement.
7. Provide Information about your Interests and Priorities
Other than searching for the information of the opponent, negotiator provide interests and priorities of himself to the other party may seem advisable. It’s a friendly signal telling the other party that you are willing to share the information with them. Negotiators who provide information to the other party about their priorities are more likely to reach integrative agreements than negotiators who do not provide this information. Employer could tell the employee what his expectation is on the employee. Once the employee know he can earn what he wants through meeting the expectation of the employer, they can come to a win-win negotiation very soon.
8. Make Multiple Offers of Equivalent Value Simultaneously
The strategy of making multiple offers of equivalent value simultaneously can be effective even with the most uncooperative of negotiators. If employer could not raise employee’s salary for certain reasons, but he know if the employee is refused again, he may be depressed and will not work hard. So employer could offer two or more proposals of equal value to employee making the employee not lose hope of work and life. Employee may satisfy with the equivalent multiple offers and reach a win-win negotiation with employer.
Solutions to Improve: Capitalizing on Differences
Valuation
To drive the company for sustainable development, keeping its profitability, the employer prefer to focus on salary outlay proportion of the total revenue and the effect to the net profit. Instead of organization development, employees will pay more attention on the absolute growth of their salary. Due to existence of the difference, we are able to reach the Level 2 in the Negotiation Pyramid Model through creating value with respect to salary raise by finding the continuing growth of profit.
Expectations
Expectations of future growth between employers and employees may vary, significantly effecting the motivation and the outcome brought by the raise finally. Therefore, setting a proper and acceptable objective is vital to lead both parties’ to consensus, promoting people to reach their expectations respectively based on a win-win negotiation.
Hence, the most common objectives for staff in Operation Department is the Store Openness Rate and Moving Average Traffic. Nevertheless, the exact figures of those standards vary by business formats and maturity of different properties. In addition, the objectives for Merchandiser Recruitment Department, lease revenue is the very target for performance appraisal. In one word, under the growth of business, raise offers are acceptable by the management.
Risk Attitude
Ordinarily, in the aspect of risk resistance capacity, organization is obviously performed more powerful in a certain of extent than individual staff does. The management can use this strength to keep the raise within their expectation. For example, for most staff with high cost for changing jobs, will not “threat” employers for raise by the motivation of change job, employers could offer them a “raise” based on their future performance.
Time Preferences
Most employees cannot wait for couples of months to wait for approval their requirement for raise, especially those who have already obtained more favorable offer from another employer. As a result, employers sound like to be force to the comer in the negotiation. Whereas companies with perfect internal training system and sufficient storage of human capital resources may perform stronger in the negotiation because there is enough time for employers to find proper staff as replacement. In this situation, negotiation can hardly to achieve a win-win result.
Capabilities to Win-Win Outcome
In negotiation for raise, employers should focus on their advantages and key resources like market share, industry ranking and the potential to offer staff a attractive future, and let employees understand without support of those resources, his or her talent and performance cannot obtain such achievement that make them kill ideas of change job. Meanwhile, management should also make employees understand that raise must be based on the growth of organization.
Reference
1. Leigh, L Thomason, (2007). The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator (2nd Edition). MA: Pearson Education.
2. Leigh L. Thompson, The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator (2009).
3. Froman, L. A., & Cohen, M. D. (1970). Compromise and Iogroll: Comparing the efficiency of two bargaining processes. Behavioral Science, 30, 180-183.
4. Leigh L. Thompson, The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator (2009).
5. Thompson, “Information exchange in negotiation.”
6. Thompson, “Information exchange in negotiation.””
7. Bazerman & Neale, Negotiating rationally; Kelley, H. H., & Schenitzke, D. P. (1972). Bargaining. In C. G. McClintock (Ed.), Experimental social psychology (pp. 298-337).
8. Leigh, L Thomason, (2007). The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator (2nd Edition). MA: Pearson Education.
9. Leigh L. Thompson, The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator (2009).
10. Froman, L. A., & Cohen, M. D. (1970). Compromise and Iogroll: Comparing the efficiency of two bargaining processes. Behavioral Science, 30, 180-183.
11. Leigh L. Thompson, The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator (2009).
12. Thompson, “Information exchange in negotiation.”
13. Thompson, “Information exchange in negotiation.””
14. Bazerman & Neale, Negotiating rationally; Kelley, H. H., & Schenitzke, D. P. (1972). Bargaining. 15. In C. G. McClintock (Ed.), Experimental social psychology (pp. 298-337).
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