INFORMAZIONI SU QUESTO EPISODIO
Recorded 22 June 2026
In Part 2 of our latest episode of Inside IR, industrial relations partner Rohan Doyle and Melbourne Business School Professor Jennifer Overbeck continue their discussion on the evolving enterprise bargaining landscape, exploring how employers, unions and employees can move beyond short-term, power-based bargaining and invest in negotiation processes that create sustainable value for all parties.
They discuss practical approaches to navigating BATNAs, managing the threat of industrial action, building trust throughout the bargaining process, and communicating effectively with employees during negotiations.
This episode forms part of our ongoing collaboration with Melbourne Business School through the Industrial Relations Negotiations Program, which equips leaders with the skills needed to negotiate more effectively in today's industrial relations environment.
Registrations are closing soon. Learn more about the program and secure your place here.
MOSTRA NOTE 🔗
TRASCRIZIONE 🔗
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Hello and welcome back to Insight IR, the Australian Industrial Relations podcast, the series that arms HR, IR, and legal professionals with the latest industrial relations thinking.
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In part one of our discussion with Professor Jennifer Overbeck from the Melbourne Business School, we explored the shifting bargaining environment and the importance of getting your own house in order, including preparation, planning, and the case for greater transparency and trust.
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In part two, we pick up the conversation by tackling one of the more difficult challenges: how employers, unions, and employees can move away from a short-term power-based negotiation and towards investing in a negotiation process that pursues longer-term benefits for all parties.
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We also cover navigating the Batner, managing the threat of industrial action, and how employers communicate with their workforce throughout the bargaining process.
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I hope you enjoyed part two of our conversation with Professor Jennifer Overbeck.
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Now, of course, it's one thing for the employer to work on their own focus and ensure they approach the negotiation with the right mindset and framing.
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But how might an employer encourage a union to do the same thing and avoid that prevention-focused mindset?
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What tips would you give employers for how they plan the negotiation to achieve this?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I should acknowledge first that some loss framing is actually good.
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When people are afraid of what they might lose, then there's a bit of a fire lit under them to try to find solutions.
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And that can be great for shaking people into action.
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Where it becomes a problem is when we focus on what we have to lose rather than thinking about pursuing creative solutions to avoid that loss.
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So sometimes I think employers use loss framing to scare unions into submission.
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I think that's going to backfire to the extent that it shuts down the solution set.
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It makes people feel that defensiveness as opposed to opening them up to new approaches.
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So you need a little bit of both.
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You need to light the fire, but you also need to not present it in such a way that people can only focus on holding tight to what they have.
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One of the things you want to pay attention to is there are human beings on the other side of the bargaining table.
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And they're wondering things like, do you hear me?
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Are you approaching me as a human being?
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And if I pay attention to the things that you're asking me, is that going to serve my interests, or is this just an effort to get me to swallow something that's really terrible for me?
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So there are a few things to do.
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Um, I'm going to actually go back to what employers can control for a minute and say that one thing I think employers and negotiators on the employer side should contemplate as they're preparing to go into negotiations is just what are their own attitudes that they're bringing in.
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When they walk into the room, is their demeanor, is their approach to the union going to convey that respect and that commitment to mutual problem solving?
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Or are they carrying in maybe some sort of latent negative feelings toward the union themselves?
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A lot of people have a lot of experience and they have a negative, maybe even a viscerally negative association with union members and union negotiators.
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And if that's true, it signals that you might have your own identity dynamics that could be an obstacle to the negotiation.
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So you want to look for how you can support yourself through that?
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Can you team up with somebody in your organization who might be newer or just might have more positive attitudes, sort of calm that down a little bit?
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Or can you go back to where that view came from?
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If you find the origin of a negative view of the union or anybody that you're dealing with, then you can try to figure out well, what was it about that interaction that was negative?
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And what kinds of experiences of interactions have I had since then that have not had those features?
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Can I can I retrain myself to focus on some of the more positive features of the relationship so that I'm not walking in sort of telegraphing negativity?
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And the reason that's so important is it's again the word trust.
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You've talked about trust.
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I talked about trust.
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If you want to be able to create an agreement where you don't have the power to simply impose your will on the other side, you're going to have to capitalize on trust.
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And if we want somebody to trust us, trust researchers tell us we have to make ourselves vulnerable to them.
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We have to trust them first.
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It's not enough to just say, trust me, and expect them to do all of the vulnerability, we have to be able to do it as well.
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The good news is, you know, first of all, there's some frameworks to how you can repair trust and how you can build trust.
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And I think there's a lot of great resources out there for people to do that.
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But if we come in with a more open attitude ourselves, if we are ready to um to be transparent, to listen and to show that respect toward the other side, it really increases the likelihood that they're willing to engage with what we have to say.
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If I put my skeptics hat on for a moment, Jen, let's assume that we we've done all these things that you're suggesting.
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We've we've undertaken extensive pre-bargaining planning to plan how we might approach the negotiation, we've um focused the discussions around solving the problems identified by the union, we've shared transparently the difficulties that the employers are facing, or all those things that you've suggested.
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Many employers will still say, look, these dynamics have been in place for decades.
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If I walk into the negotiating room and say, look, times are tough right now, we really can't afford wage increases, but let's collaborate and try and find a win-win solution that positions us well for the longer term, they're going to get from the other side of the negotiating table just a simple eye roll and then the same old negotiation they've had every other time.
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Some might also say that there is perhaps sometimes some upside for unions in conflict, in the sense that it's a selling point for union membership and the like.
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And so a collaborative strategy is not always in everyone's interests.
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For those skeptics out there, how do you see all of that playing out?
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And how might you suggest employers approach that discussion discussion to ensure the union engages with it?
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Yeah, um, of course, I do want to be really straight that we are not going to solve all the problems of human behavior by posting materials on a website and walking in with a positive attitude, right?
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That's not going to fix everything.
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Um there are a few things in what you said.
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Um, for one thing, I would not walk into the room and just lead with times are tight.
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Uh, I think if I were trying to reset to a more integrative negotiation, I would start with a conversation about the assumptions.
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So, can we share our assessment of where things stand for the business, for the employees?
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Do we have a common understanding of the pain points, of the challenges, of the successes?
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And so you, you know, you start by setting the stage of mutual understanding as opposed to staking out a position that invites the other side to stake out a contrary position.
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And we transition then into what kinds of conversations are you having about these issues?
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Obviously, your members' wage concerns are a big focus.
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What else is happening?
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What other things are people concerned about?
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What are some thoughts about a way forward?
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And obviously, uh this might lead some people to try to derail you with a positional challenge.
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And I want to I want to acknowledge something you said as well, which is it's not always in union leaders' interest to look conciliatory.
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We know from other research that in fact people choose leaders who project strength, even when that strength is counterproductive.
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So it may be that you're gonna go and you're gonna blow everything up.
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We're gonna hurt ourselves net.
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But the fact that you're standing up for us and you're fighting for us makes you look like a really good leader.
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So if I'm a union leader and I know I have to go talk to people later, I have that in the back of my mind.
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You know, how did I show that I was tough?
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So I think you want to try not to make it a boxing ring where both sides are children to their corners and then come out swinging.
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But at the same time, I think you do have to have in mind how can we support the union leaders who were elected in a way that the people on the management side are not?
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How do we support them and give them these face-saving things that they can take back to the union to show how they stood up?
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And we can actually have that conversation.
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It happens in international negotiations all the time.
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You know, we need we need you to make a huge concession, but we know you have to go back to your electorate and show that you stood tough.
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And here's what we're gonna set up for you so that you can go back and say that.
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It's a very, very common technique.
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So I think um, I think being ready to affirm that power is a strategy.
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Another thing employers can keep in mind is it's often the lower power party that drives creativity and bargaining.
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And so now that employers are in a position of being somewhat lower power, they they also have greater clarity uh around what can be done and what some of the potential solutions are, what's possible from an economic perspective.
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So the employer is probably now where the real energy is going to come from in terms of identifying potential outcomes.
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In doing that, it's important to be really careful with language.
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You definitely want to make it explicit when are you brainstorming and when are you actually negotiating positions?
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And for something like this, I think you can use tools.
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I often recommend an artifact like a shared sheet of paper with columns.
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You can have one column, what the issues are that can come right from your scorecard.
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A second column that's uh where are the things where we think we have some potential for alignment, but we haven't agreed yet.
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And a third column where we've agreed.
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And something like this is particularly useful right now, where as you know, you wouldn't want to move anything to the third column unless you're genuinely ready to be bound to it because of how it could be treated in any eventual arbitration, right?
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But the Fair Work Commission.
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But you want to have tools that encourage identifying issues and talking about those issues and making it clear that we're creating a space for ideation uh and exploring options.
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You mentioned arbitration, Jen.
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Let let's go there.
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Uh, in the context of the BATNA.
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Now, how do you encourage unions and employees to engage with these alternatives if they're involved, uh if they involve sacrificing short-term benefits for longer-term outcomes, particularly in circumstances where unions know they can simply hold out and achieve a no less favorable outcome in intractable bargaining arbitration.
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As you know, Jen, the fundamental problem for employers now with these reforms is that there is this exit strategy, and if the unions and employees aren't comfortable with the offer that's on the table, all they need to do is hold out of nine months of bargaining, provided it's also nine months post expiry of the existing deal, and they can have the deal arbitrated by the commission.
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And in running that arbitration, the commission's prohibited from taking any existing condition backwards unless it's agreed amongst the bargaining representatives.
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So how do you break through that quite strong Batna where employers and unions get to keep what they have today?
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I think when you see parties really focused on Batna like that, it signals that they feel it's unsafe or pointless to enter a negotiation frame.
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They're just playing the power game.
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Um if there's not a genuine willingness to engage, I think the default becomes we'll just hold our ground.
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And so this is exactly where the openness, the relationship building, the recognizing that union members have identity concerns, have a history, are looking for a respectful approach, all of that pays off.
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Because you can change the conversation out of a power frame and towards a more interest-based frame when you adopt that different kind of a stance.
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And there's some research on how culture affects negotiations.
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And I often think that we could think about unions and especially blue-collar workers as sharing some cultural features.
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So the research suggests that we can break through some of that power-based stonewalling, that defensive stonewalling by using particular language, for example.
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There's language that resonates through some cultural lenses.
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And that includes things like language that affirms union members' strength, that affirms their integrity, that talks about them as protectors of their fellow union members or their families.
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Strength, integrity, and protection are all critical identity issues that union members in particular may often feel are missed or neglected or disrespected by their management counterparts.
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So reframing the discussion in those terms, using that kind of language, complementing the counterpart rather than always challenging them.
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Again, affirming their power and giving them something that they can take back to report, all of that can be ways to kickstart a conversation where somebody's, you know, they're sort of hiding behind their power, letting it fall to the Batina instead of engaging with you.
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Yeah, good points, Jen.
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And I imagine it would also help to show the upside of being able to reach agreement as compared to what might be possible in the arbitration, because we know in in many cases, the flexibility that the parties have in uh doing a deal is far going to outweigh the more restrictive environment that you might have in arbitration.
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So, for example, um, you uh have the opportunity in the traditional bargaining setting to negotiate changes that will enhance productivity, that will enable the employer to grow the pie and share those benefits with the workforce.
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Things like changing the way um in which rosters are structured, changing skills of the workforce, uh looking at uh experience and working methods, implementation of new technology, uh, changes to how work is incentivized as well to reward effort.
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I mean the list goes on.
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All of those things are possible in the context of a negotiated outcome.
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Most, if not all of them, are not possible in the context of an arbitrated outcome because of that no less favorable precondition.
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And so those arbitration rules are really very much a handbrake on that creativity and the avenues available to achieve those productivity outcomes.
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And so the extent to which we can actually make those benefits visible throughout the bargaining process is, I imagine, going to make it a lot easier to do a deal.
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But the challenge remains, Jen, I think how do you encourage unions to engage in that type of process when it's far easier to say, well, I'll just keep what I have, thanks, and add 5% per annum on top.
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Do you have any tips on how you might encourage employers to make that shift?
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Yeah, again, not to sound like a broken record, but I think often what stops that from happening is that bargaining slips into a straight power game.
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It's who has the power and who can impose their will on the other side.
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In the IR context, unions can exercise that power by delaying negotiations or pushing matters toward intractable bargaining.
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Um, there's also research, again, that feel that uh suggests that parties that feel powerful in that way, one-sided power, often do not sense an incentive to be responsive.
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They'll just withdraw.
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So each part uh each party stays focused on their power rather than on problem solving.
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And so, really, the only way to shift that conversation uh is for employers to try to get the union out of that power frame.
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And of course, that means they have to be out of that power frame themselves.
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This can be difficult for employers because they're used to being the party with power and they're not used to negotiating outside of that frame.
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But we we also know from just tons of research that power frames lead to battles and impasses.
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Anytime that we're arguing over, you know, I'm gonna make you do what I say, uh, then the outcome is defined by who has the ability to follow through on that.
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And when employers don't have that, that's not going to be a winning approach.
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In any kind of labor negotiations, obviously there's a lot of rights framing as well, which is focusing on contracts, the law, fairness, precedent.
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And all you have to do is think about an argument with your partner that you might have had ever about what's right or who's right or what's fair or what we did before.
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And you can see that that is also just going to go into an infinite spiral.
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We'll never solve anything.
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And so, as tempting as it is to try to reach for more power or to try to argue the rights, the only real way to navigate through those roadblocks is going to be through interest-based negotiation where we identify what matters, um, we're clear on the issues, we're willing to give and take, and we find non-obvious ways to solve the problem.
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And I understand that right now, when labor unions are powerful, they don't have the same incentive to do that.
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But you know, everything we've talked about today should help employers drive this kind of negotiation, that when they when they take a respectful um approach, taking the perspective of their counterparts, understanding where identity comes from, understanding the importance of the history, why the unions see the world the way they do, then that allows them to sort of start to think about why they might not be willing to talk, why certain positions feel non-negotiable with them.
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And so from that understanding, employers can start to unpack a different set of skills.
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They can move away from power-based negotiation, and they can instead have engagement that operates on a level of respect for the other party, respects their position, but also opens them up to willingness to more actively engage in the conversation.
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Along these lines, I run an exercise in our advanced negotiations program.
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In this exercise, participants form groups and they define a group identity by discussing some hot button issues like what do you think about banning speech or how would you distribute wealth in society?
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They spend about 20 minutes forming this group identity.
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And then we come in and we tell them that aliens are going to blow up the planet unless they can all agree to be part of just one of the groups that have formed.
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So you have to abandon your own group and join another group.
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And then they'll argue for a while over which tribe they should join.
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And it seems obvious, right, that A, these are identities that they've held for 20 minutes, right?
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How much do you really care?
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And B, the world is going to blow up.
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So why does it matter?
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Pick one, join another tribe.
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It's better to do that than to be dead.
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But of course, what happens?
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Even with very experienced and very senior executive negotiators doing the negotiations, the most common outcome is that aliens blow up the world.
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And I think it goes to illustrate that people can't even agree to abandon a 20-minute old identity to join another.
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And if it's that hard in a simulation in a course, then how much harder will it be in real industrial relations negotiations when there's a real history and potentially decades behind them?
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So the key thing to keep in mind is that rational pitches don't work and definitely a hostile argument doesn't work.
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The only thing that saves the world is to take identity seriously, to respect what's sacred to them, even if it doesn't make sense to you, to find and support the positive aspects of their identity and communicate your own in positive ways, to acknowledge the past without denying pain, which I think many of us want to do, but that rings really false to our counterparts, and to find points of relationship and connection between the sides.
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This is not something that's happened.
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So employers can say unions are not going to respond to us when we come in wanting to problem solve, but I would bet you very few employers have come in with this kind of an attitude either.
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I'm sure that's resonating very strongly with our listeners, Jen.
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There's uh so many things to learn, I think, particularly in the industrial relations space.
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Um before we finish up, industrial action.
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We haven't touched on that too much.
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What about those employers that are extremely sensitive to industrial action and find that difficult to manage as part of the negotiation?
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What tips do you have for them on how they might encourage unions and employees to instead focus all their energies on the negotiation rather than engaging in that kind of activity?
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Yeah, clearly industrial action is a potent threat.
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It's both an expression of power and a means for revenge if there's a group that is looking for writing some historical wrong.
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If that's the game being played that tells me that we are stuck in power posturing.
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That's pretty much it.
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So when it comes to, I'm gonna pick up on the word posturing.
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One of my colleagues once studied negotiators' physical postures during negotiations.
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And you know, there can be like a big expansive posture which signals power, and there can be a small constricted posture which signals submission.
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And some negotiators will go in really big to dominate the space.
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You know, they're sort of like a puffer fish, they're warning you away uh don't get too close, don't threaten me.
00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:03.200
And so my colleague wanted to know what's the right response to this.
00:22:03.359 --> 00:22:06.720
A lot of us probably have the instinct that we'll puff ourselves up too.
00:22:06.799 --> 00:22:07.920
We'll meet power with power.
00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:10.400
So we're going to show that we're not going to be pushed around.
00:22:10.640 --> 00:22:20.720
But what my colleague actually found is people who go in and fight, you know, the large posture with their own large posture, typically the agreements blew up.
00:22:20.799 --> 00:22:22.319
They didn't, they didn't reach agreement.
00:22:22.400 --> 00:22:25.279
When they did reach agreement, they were extremely low quality.
00:22:25.519 --> 00:22:32.880
And what actually worked was for the counterpart to let the person be big and actually go small themselves, at least initially.
00:22:33.039 --> 00:22:36.559
Just go small, show you're not going to create a fight, show that you're not a threat.
00:22:36.799 --> 00:22:41.039
That lets the puffer fish calm down and stop being so defensive.
00:22:41.359 --> 00:22:57.039
And surprisingly, even though the one person is taking a posture that sort of telegraphs a lack of a lack of power, those groups reached more agreements and they reached better agreements than the ones where the two are really going head to head.
00:22:57.200 --> 00:23:05.920
And even the person who went small, that person still generally had just as good of outcomes as in other groups and just as good as their counterpart.
00:23:06.079 --> 00:23:13.519
So I tell you that story to illustrate that we always hesitate to concede even a little bit of power.
00:23:13.599 --> 00:23:15.920
We don't want to give up any advantage that we have.
00:23:16.240 --> 00:23:27.200
But when you have someone who's throwing around a threat, often the best thing is to reduce their feeling of threat, reduce their defensiveness, calm things down, remove the heat.
00:23:27.359 --> 00:23:28.960
And it can take some time.
00:23:29.680 --> 00:23:44.400
It helps to put your very best interpersonal people forward to talk to them through this, not necessarily the ones who are going to move in for positioning when it comes time for value claiming, but you know, you need to calm things down, you need to move them out of that power mindset.
00:23:44.880 --> 00:23:48.880
And that's a great tip for at the negotiating table, Jen.
00:23:49.039 --> 00:23:53.200
And much of our discussion has focused on those bargaining table dynamics.
00:23:53.279 --> 00:24:00.480
But we know in industrial relations, the negotiation at the bargaining table is between employer and generally union.
00:24:00.640 --> 00:24:00.880
Yeah.
00:24:01.039 --> 00:24:06.960
But it's ultimately those that aren't at the negotiating table, the employees that vote on the deal.
00:24:07.200 --> 00:24:10.880
What tips do you have for employers' engagement with employees?
00:24:11.119 --> 00:24:20.160
How do we encourage employees to focus on the longer-term objective of growing the pie, perhaps at the expense of those shorter-term interests?
00:24:22.000 --> 00:24:26.000
So look, I'm our time is short, I know, and so I'm going to give a fairly simplistic answer.
00:24:27.839 --> 00:24:33.039
Which is, you know, managers should use the skills that we're supposed to be good at anyway.
00:24:33.200 --> 00:24:36.000
Um, communicating, influencing.
00:24:36.240 --> 00:24:42.960
And I think you referred to this earlier that this isn't something that can wait until the time that we're ready to go to the barnier table.
00:24:43.039 --> 00:24:47.680
It's something that should be part of our ongoing communication, our ongoing messaging.
00:24:47.759 --> 00:24:56.400
It's not just preparation to negotiate, but it's the way that we encourage people to think about their relationship with the company to begin with.
00:24:56.799 --> 00:25:09.200
You want to use all the stuff we've talked about, finding out what employees are discussing, affirming their identities and values, sharing information transparently, encouraging a collaborative approach throughout your conversation.
00:25:09.440 --> 00:25:16.079
Employers should be using all of their channels to communicate early, set the tone, counter rumors or suspicions, and persuade.
00:25:16.240 --> 00:25:24.799
And one tip I do have here is that I think it's very easy for all of us who are in managerial or leadership roles to forget a particular human bias.
00:25:24.960 --> 00:25:35.680
There's a very robust human bias, which is that we all tend to regard those in power with more distrust and suspicion than the evidence warrants.
00:25:35.839 --> 00:25:38.160
It's called the sinister attribution bias.
00:25:38.319 --> 00:25:52.000
And it means that no matter what somebody is saying, if they have more power than we do, we have a tendency, and especially they have a higher rank than we do, we have a tendency to think they're not doing this in good faith or they're holding something back.
00:25:52.960 --> 00:26:13.759
This is so robust and so pervasive, but I think that managers and uh employers tend to expect that their good faith will be recognized, that when they come in, having genuinely done their best to come up with good proposals that they think are truly fair, they expect that to be recognized.
00:26:13.920 --> 00:26:18.880
But this bias tells us that it will rarely be recognized as much as it should be.
00:26:19.039 --> 00:26:20.720
So we need to go overboard.
00:26:20.880 --> 00:26:22.880
We need to do more than we think.
00:26:22.960 --> 00:26:37.680
Um, and fortunately, this is good management practice in general, but it's a reminder that we always want to be thinking about telling the story, sharing the data, um, kind of taking people on the journey, that those are all critical elements.
00:26:38.079 --> 00:26:44.720
Yeah, and something that unions do particularly well, I think, and in many cases, there's some room for improvement on the employer side.
00:26:44.799 --> 00:26:48.880
But there's some uh great uh great tips, Jen, really helpful guidance.
00:26:49.039 --> 00:26:57.680
And as we said at the start of this episode, it is possibly the most difficult negotiating environment for enterprise bargaining that we've seen in some time.
00:26:57.920 --> 00:27:08.559
And given the industrial relations reform from 2022, 2023, rolling out the same approaches that employers have in the past simply aren't going to be effective.
00:27:08.720 --> 00:27:12.799
The change in negotiating leverage, negotiating power has been quite significant.
00:27:12.960 --> 00:27:38.400
And that calls for different approaches, uh, more robust preparation, probably more time and resources dedicated to that preparation, a better understanding of these new rules and what they permit and prohibit and where the opportunities might lie to regain some of that leverage, but also a new mindset to the actual negotiation itself and perhaps investment in those negotiating skills that you've been talking about, Jen.
00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:40.319
That's certainly more important than ever.
00:27:40.480 --> 00:27:57.279
And it's those skills that are going to help try and shift that negotiation into that more productive space, focusing on those longer-term interests and less so about those shorter-term interests and try and grow the pie rather than just argue about the size of the slice.
00:27:57.680 --> 00:28:00.160
Which I think brings us to an important announcement.
00:28:00.319 --> 00:28:08.960
Jen, I've been admiring the work that you and the team at Melbourne Business School have been doing with experienced commercial negotiators as part of your advanced negotiating course.
00:28:09.119 --> 00:28:16.319
And I've often thought it would be super helpful if you had a course that was perhaps a bit more geared to the industrial relations lens.
00:28:16.640 --> 00:28:17.599
Absolutely.
00:28:17.920 --> 00:28:22.960
And we have designed a three-day program that features your own expertise, Ron.
00:28:23.200 --> 00:28:28.799
Uh, going through the new legislation and changed environment for industrial relations bargaining.
00:28:29.119 --> 00:28:54.559
The program is designed to be highly practical and relevant to what organizations are dealing with today around IR bargaining, integrating the newest developments in the regulatory space with proven negotiation frameworks, covering areas like enterprise bargaining, negotiation planning, multi-party dynamics, stakeholder alignment, strategy, and complex environments.
00:28:54.799 --> 00:29:04.799
So, this gives us the foundation to do large multi-party negotiations in this in the program with a two-level structure that parallels IR negotiation.
00:29:04.960 --> 00:29:11.519
So you have constituents who aren't at the table but can determine whether a deal actually goes through very high fidelity.
00:29:11.680 --> 00:29:14.319
We talk about systems thinking in these negotiations.
00:29:14.480 --> 00:29:16.000
How do you manage the process?
00:29:16.079 --> 00:29:17.119
How do you manage the parties?
00:29:17.200 --> 00:29:18.559
How do you manage the issues?
00:29:18.720 --> 00:29:26.000
We incorporate some game theory, talk about defining what value are you actually negotiating for.
00:29:26.160 --> 00:29:28.160
So really getting concrete about that.
00:29:28.240 --> 00:29:33.359
And then how do you signal intentions and how do you read the intentions of the other side?
00:29:33.599 --> 00:29:40.799
It's an intensive program that will really boost skills, boost confidence, and boost mastery of the IR space.
00:29:40.880 --> 00:29:55.039
And it's aimed at both practitioners and leaders where IR negotiation is a material part of their activities, as well as those who might be adjacent to those negotiators, such as business leaders who make decisions about bargaining or strategy.
00:29:55.599 --> 00:30:09.200
And across the program, participants will also hear from experienced negotiators through an expert panel, and they have the opportunity to learn and connect with others in the program who were navigating similar challenges.
00:30:09.359 --> 00:30:18.480
So the key outcome is that participants leave better prepared for today's IR landscape and more confident heading into upcoming negotiations.
00:30:18.640 --> 00:30:20.720
And I'm really excited to be working with you on it.
00:30:21.039 --> 00:30:28.640
Likewise, Jen, very much looking forward to delivering the Melbourne Business School Advanced Enterprise Bargaining Negotiations course with you later this year.
00:30:28.720 --> 00:30:32.079
And a big thank you from us for joining us on the podcast today.
00:30:32.160 --> 00:30:39.279
It's been really interesting discussion and some quite helpful insights for employers across the country to think about.
00:30:39.440 --> 00:30:51.759
If you are a HR or IR practitioner with responsibility for enterprise bargaining, or perhaps a lawyer or business leader with oversight about the process and involvement in decision making, do keep an eye out for the course.
00:30:51.839 --> 00:31:02.400
You can get further details from the Melbourne Business School website very shortly, or contact one of your friendly Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer team members and we'll point you in the right direction.
00:31:02.640 --> 00:31:05.759
As always, we'd love to hear feedback on Inside IR.
00:31:05.839 --> 00:31:13.119
So feel free to comment, direct message, or send an email to inside ir at hsfkramer.com.
00:31:13.279 --> 00:31:18.000
Otherwise, thanks for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Inside IR.