With strikes taking place across multiple sectors, we are all following the negotiations between workers and employers. But how successful and efficient have their tactics been from a negotiation expert's point of view?

When negotiating pay rises, is it better to start at a higher figure, or share a figure that is more likely to be accepted?

It depends. There is a process called "anchoring" where the purpose of the initial demand is to structure the expectations of the other parties, rather than make a proposal which you expect the negotiation to be based around. An example: if I am buying a car in a showroom and the dealer offers me a 1% discount when I was expecting 10%, their proposal might modify my expectation downwards.

When the tactic is to start with a figure which you hope will be accepted there are three guidelines: it should be defendable and rational, it should be within the limits of acceptability of the other party, and it must address the issues, needs and balance of power of all parties, not just your side of the table. This last point is why the train strikes have been so problematic – the union demand is for pay increases, the employers want changes to working practices. Any deal will have to combine both.

Looking at the ongoing strike action, how do you keep emotions from affecting a negotiation?

Why would you want to? In the case of nurses, they encouraged employers and the public to remember their heroic work, particularly during Covid. Employers encouraged nurses to mull over their duty to provide a service and encouraged the public to worry about the catastrophic effect on patients of unmanned or understaffed areas of a hospital.

All these emotional factors will have influenced the negotiators at the table. However, good negotiators recognise that fanning these emotional flames in public is destructive – the serious negotiations take place behind closed doors, where the rhetoric can be left outside.

Has either side made any mistakes in the negotiation process, and what could have been done differently?

In my experience, based on the many hundreds of thousands of managers who have come to Scotwork to learn how to negotiate better, the four most common mistakes even experienced negotiators make are:
1. Spending too much time arguing the rights of their situation and not enough time negotiating creatively.

2. Making proposals that will never fly because they are one-sided.

3. Failing to identify why the other side are really saying No to their proposals and reshaping them accordingly.

4. Failing to get maximum value from the negotiating chips at their disposal by recognising that some things have little value to one side but great value to the other side, and therefore present great trading opportunities.

Scotwork teaches that the best outcomes are achieved when both sides recognise that "win-win’" by creatively and collaboratively striving to make the pie bigger, is always better than ‘win-lose’ when the parties compete to make their share bigger at the expense of the other side.

Stephen White is Chairman of negotiation skills and training consultancy Scotwork UK Ltd