Employee Preference Analysis:  Using Conjoint Analysis to Support Labor Negotiations and Compensation Plan Design

With school district budgets increasingly tightening, it is now more important that ever when conducting labor negotiations or designing compensation and benefit plans to really understand employee preferences.  While district leaders traditionally make an effort to understand employee priorities before entering into labor negotiations or designing compensation and benefits packages, the results of these efforts tend to be qualitative and anecdotal.  Rarely do negotiators have concrete information that quantifies employee preferences.