What have you learnt?
As a first step, unions and employers should share their answers with each other, along with their assessment of their own and the other party's strengths and weaknesses and the main issues for further discussion. This should happen before the workshop on action planning so that each side can consider the views expressed by the other.
If you plan to use any external facilitation this would be an assessment undertaken by them. Facilitation can help bring an objective perspective to the activity.
The following questions are designed to prompt a conversation about how well you are doing in developing a dialogue about service improvement.
- Do you have a shared understanding about the current industrial relations climate?
- What, for each party, is the most striking finding from the other's answers?
- What are you both doing well?
- What are you doing badly?
- Do you have a shared understanding of whether you are devoting sufficient attention to service improvement issues?
- Do you have a shared understanding of whether information is being disclosed to the right people at the right time?
- Are there any major differences between the responses given by the parties? For example, does the employer's response suggest that the unions are engaged in strategic discussions and the unions' response suggest that no effective discussions take place?
- Do both sides agree on the extent to which your performance management system encourages employee and trade union involvement in service improvement?
- Having answered all these questions you are now ready to answer the most challenging question. Just how close are you to the best practice outlined in the principles and standards? You will have done this already separately, but now is the time for an honest and open exchange between the unions and the employer.
The next series of questions should prompt you to think about what you will do in the future:
- What steps do you need to take together to address some of the weaknesses revealed by the analysis?
- Are there issues that you need to address individually?
- Do you all have the capacity and right skills to make union and employee engagement an effective instrument for positive change? If not then where are your skills gaps and what do you need to do to fill them?
