Having worked in many aspects of the health and safety field for over 25 years I have been fortunate to have participated in hundreds of negotiations. A number of years ago, Emilcott decided to look at the field of negotiation training and skills development to evaluate what was available to enhance the negotiation skills of Health and Safety (H&S) and other technically trained professionals. What we found was that there were many approaches to business negotiation training, but few which seemed to hit the mark and meet the unique needs of the practitioners in our field. As a result, we developed a curriculum for H&S professionals to learn the skills to conduct effective Negotiations. This paper presents the highlights of what we have learned in developing these H&S Negotiation seminars.
We all negotiate and we do it quite often! Whenever there is a conflict then two or more parties must find ways to resolve that conflict to find resolution. The goal is to find satisfying resolutions to meet the needs of all parties involved. Without mutual agreement the negotiation process gets stalled or just plain stops.
There are no shortage of disputes in managing the practice of health and safety. Disputes range across a broad spectrum. H&S managers face conflicts trying to gain support and resources from senior management; trying to get other managers to change operational priorities; striving to get workers to use safety equipment; meeting with regulators to influence regulation or reduce penalties; and working with vendors and consultants to provide goods and services. Every one of these scenarios presents opportunities to negotiate.
You must have a belief that a successful career in H&S requires one to successfully negotiate. Successful negotiation requires effort to learn the skills of the negotiation process so success is not left up to chance or good luck.
"In business, you don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate"
Many of the current negotiation training strategies and techniques for businesses focus on the art of winning. Negotiation is too often presented as a zero-sum game where every gain on one side leads to a corresponding loss on the other. One party wins and the other loses. The training focuses on the art of claiming value through whatever means seems most effective.
This may work in some business situations but the concept of zero-sum directly conflicts with a common health and safety management principal of striving to find win-win not win-lose solutions. The H&S field commonly suffers from a perception that gains in health and safety are at the expense of productivity and efficiency. We all know that the best H&S outcomes are those where health and safety improvements match similar gains in business metrics (cost reduction, productivity, quality, increased sales). So zero-sum negotiations or winning at a great expense from the other side, may not actually be winning after all.
