Social dialogue and collective bargaining engineering

Safeguarding and optimising relationships with the SEC (social and economic committee) and trade unions; from the “spoilsport” lawyer to the “lawyer-coach”: social communication and legal engineering

EXPERTISE

The bills introduced by president Macron have led companies, managers, HR departments, SECs and trade unions to revolutionise their social and legal relationships. Fewer strict legal requirements, more collective bargaining and contracting. Significant scope for creativity, an opportunity to develop trust or restore trust lost between social partners – these are the foundations of the new modes of collective working relationships.

Aligned with this vision, we have the technical and digital tools, operational expertise, concrete experience and capacity to support you along paths wrongly considered impractical, thanks to customised legal analysis.

An ambitious target: that the management of social dialogue and relationships with trade unions and the SEC are dealt with smoothly by the company, and that a significant portion of your HR tasks don’t use up all the energy that should be reserved for individual employees, management, and the human resources development strategy within the company.

CLIENT CASE STUDY

Background: high level of mistrust between the management and the SEC; permanent threat of interference with the works committee

Action:

Audit of management practices in the context of SEC management, firstly to safeguard all practices and to make the terms of the SEC’s chairmanship indisputable
Coaching management to improve their positioning
Identification of roleplaying, conflicts between values, positions and principles and means of communication of the different members of the SEC, enabling a return to high-quality dialogue
Back-office support during collective bargaining to identify levers of negotiation and elements of language
Creation of a standard set of information documents related to a restructuring project and a non-conflictual presentation strategy within operational time frames

Result: calmer social dialogue, shorter consultative procedures, fewer appraisals and removal of the threat of interference with the works committee