Confidential Information for Representatives of the Coronet Management

Depending on the size of the group, the negotiating team should comprise representatives from:
• Finance
• Personnel
• Sales and Marketing

Your plans are to convert the whole company to a “home-office” working environment over the next four years. You are convinced that this policy would considerably reduce costs and greatly increase efficiency. Tremendous cost savings have already been achieved on the production side of the business, but there is now very little potential for further improvements there. It is on the sales and administration side that you must be looking to reduce costs; dispensing with the overheads of the regional offices (whilst retaining the personnel) is the way to go. Achieving this change within your four-year timeframe is an important goal for senior management. Any compromise including a continued office presence in Bodø that you may reach in the forthcoming negotiation ought to have a strict time limit placed on it.

Since you realise that the planned switch to home offices is likely to meet resistance from the staff, you were not initially planning to make the changeover quickly. However, the excellent offer you recently received from a real estate agent for the Sjøgata premises in Bodø has changed the situation. If you can persuade the Bodø employees to agree a home-office solution now, you could 1) sell the Sjøgata premises at well over market price, and 2) use Bodø as a pilot project in the company’s reorganisation process.

The offer for Sjøgata
Three weeks ago an estate agent acting on behalf of a very large hotel chain approached you. The company it is representing is trying to purchase the block in which the Sjøgata office is located. Their intention is to demolish the whole block and build an upmarket business hotel catering to the oil