A SWOT analysis is a key planning and evaluation tool. It has been used by unions and worker organisations to come up with strategies and activities to strengthen their existing power resources, develop new ones, and engage workers in collective action.
A SWOT analysis is an evaluation method and a planning tool that helps sort out the areas of your union that you and your members consider as successes or concerns. The SWOT analysis is relatively easy to use in comparison with other organisational analysis methods.
A SWOT analysis involves both an internal and an external assessment. The internal assessment identifies the strengths and weaknesses of your union in relation to a specific issue or challenge or a set of issues and challenges. The external assessment, meanwhile, identifies the opportunities and threats that your union faces.
The results of a SWOT analysis may help unions identify trends, both internal and external. It can draw attention to areas where action is needed, such as the need to invest in organising, campaigning or advocacy work. It can also help you gain sound insight into your union, especially when you involve large sections of your membership in the analysis.
When you have completed a SWOT analysis and are ready to take the next steps of setting goals and action plans, you may want to proceed with the materials on Setting Goals and from there move to the appropriate sections on Organisational Transformation, Campaigning and Organising,Collective Bargainingor Advocacy.
Strengths and weaknesses are internal variables – look inside your union!
The strengths of your union are the internal variables that include areas of excellence or good performance. Weaknesses, on the other hand, are the internal disadvantages that your union can control.
Strengths and weaknesses typically pertain to your union’s internal resources, skills, organisational structure, barriers, and limitations. Your union wields considerable influence over these two internal variables!
Strengths are those advantages that will favour a better performance of your union and thus must be utilised. Strengths are the characteristics of your union that you often want to highlight or showcase to your members. For example, if your union has a relatively high union membership rate, you may want to consider that a strength.
Weaknesses, in contrast, are those major disadvantages and risks that will impede your union’s performance and thus should be minimised if not eliminated. Weaknesses may include limited resources (both human and material), low and declining union membership, limited structures for member participation, and low trust among members of their leadership. Further, a union that lacks a rank-and-file organising team, or shows an unwillingness to organise informal workers may consider this to be a weakness.
Opportunities and threats are external variables – look outside your union!
Opportunities are your union’s external possibilities for success. They comprise the major future advantages that must be utilised if not maximised. For example, having labour laws that provide the legislative framework for the exercise of the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining may facilitate your campaign or organising drive and your collective negotiation with employers. Further, the rise of a renewable energy sector may be considered by your union as a greenfield for organising. The more opportunities that can be identified, the more flexibility and attention is needed to allocate the resources to the areas of greatest return.
Threats, on the other hand, are the external negatives that are beyond the control of your union. These are external forces that can adversely impact your union. They comprise major future happenings or changes that may exert a significant impact on your union’s performance/stability and thus must be minimised by preventing them from happening or preparing actions to cope with them. Examples of threats include some labour market trends that may challenge a union’s relevance in terms of collective representation. For example, the rise of the gig economy where workers are (mis)classified as self-employed or individual contractors poses organising challenges to trade unions. The expansion of subcontracting chains, which results in the increase in the number of workers on non-permanent forms of employment and in multi-party and disguised employment relationships, makes organising ever more difficult for trade unions.
So, how to go about it? Let’s start with the so-called “SWOT analysis grid”. The SWOT grid is a table that is broken up into four quadrants: Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. At the top are two quadrants, your strengths and weaknesses which are often considered internal variables. At the lower half of the SWOT grid are opportunities and threats which are considered external forces. Strengths and opportunities are usually considered as helpful factors while weaknesses and threats are classified as obstacles.
Here are some examples:
In a SWOT analysis, you will want to consider the interaction between the internal and external elements. These interactions are captured by the questions indicated below.
Interactions among SWOT categories
A SWOT analysis is done in a group setting and can serve as a forum for union members to express their ideas about the state of the union. It is a way for your organisation to collect the knowledge and perspectives of your members that elected officers might not be aware of. One of your local union members, for example, may be aware of a growing union avoidance strategy of employers that is unknown to federation-level union officers.
A SWOT activity may involve both the key officers of your organisation and the whole membership in the process. This may include smaller or sub-group meetings and workshops, member surveys, online tools and similar activities that will give more access to the process to union members.
The materials needed for a SWOT activity are the following:
Before starting the activity, identify and assign a facilitator and a documenter. Let’s call the participants in this activity the SWOTing team.
SWOT Group Process
Step 1: Start out by placing a large SWOT grid on the wall. You can use four large pieces of paper to represent each of the four grids. Make sure that that you have several stacks of sticky notes and marker pens on the meeting room table. You can use four different colours of sticky notes to represent each of the four grids. Coloured meta cards may also be used. Make sure that you have a sticky tape for the meta cards.
Step 2: The facilitator makes a brief discussion of the objectives and expected output of the exercise and goes through the elements of a SWOT analysis to refresh the SWOTing team about the tool.
Step 3: The facilitator asks each participant to write down thoughts they have relating to a strength, weakness, opportunity or threat they see within your organisation. Each participant is then asked to write down one “item” on each sticky note.
Step 4: Once participants have several items written down, the facilitator asks them to place their respective comments on the grid where they see fit. After all notes are placed on the grid, a large number of sticky notes with hand written comments are now on each of the grids.
Step 5: After each person has contributed his/her item, the facilitator divides the participants into four groups, each assigned to one of the quadrants on the grid. Each group will choose among themselves a rapporteur to present the findings of the group. For smaller groups, a SWOT exercise can also be done without dividing the participants into work groups so that brainstorming is done with the entire group.
Step 6: Each group is then asked to sift through the sticky notes placed on their quadrant and organise them according to topics or themes.
Step 7: After the sticky notes are grouped into topics or themes, each group is asked to draw a bar graph with the most consistent or repeated items having the largest “bars.” This is an easy way to rank the items that are most prevalent.
Step 8: The facilitator asks the rapporteur of each group to present their findings from the assigned quadrant to the entire SWOTing team, and discuss their assessment of the identified trends.
Step 9: After all findings from all four quadrants have been shared, the entire team begins discussing themes, issues, and actions. Throughout this, additional items may be uncovered, and added to one of the four quadrants.
Step 10: Reach consensus about the most important findings in each category: prioritise! It is possible that the group may have identified a number of themes per category. The group can collectively decide to prioritise the top trends identified per category. Compare the results to the organisation’s vision, mission, and goals.
Step 11: Formulate strategies and action plans that address the prioritised trends and themes. This might take some time and even need external input. The Tool Kit materials on Strategic Planning can assist you.
Step 12: Identify and prepare your next action steps. Summarise the SWOT analysis and next action steps in a report.
The Kenya Union of Commercial, Food and Allied Workers (KUCFAW) undertook a SWOT analysis activity in coming up with its Internal Self Reform and Transformation Plan for 2019-2023.
The SWOT activity process involved two 3-day SWOT analysis planning workshops and another three 2-day validation workshops.
The SWOT analysis planning workshop was conducted separately for the national officials (members of the Union National Executive Board) and for the branch leadership, selected shop stewards, selected union members, and union secretariat staff in key departments that are directly engaged in provision of union products and services, including interaction with union members. Besides engaging the participants on the need for conducting the analysis and the benefits of such an activity, the focus was also on the importance of their involvement and frankness in the process. In this way, the union ensured that all of the participants were actively involved in the discussions and generation of ideas.
There are many ways of presenting the results of a SWOT exercise. The most common way is through a table format, as the KUCFAW did.
As part of the SWOT analysis process, the results of KUCFAW’s analysis as listed in Table 3 were grouped into six key themes:
(1) membership organisation, recruitment and retention;
(2) institutional capacity-building;
(3) financial sustainability;
(4) partnership and collaboration;
(5) publicity, lobbying, and advocacy; and
(6) implementation, monitoring, evaluation and reporting.
These six key themes were identified as the union’s key result areas, each with a strategic objective and set of activities.
The SWOT results may yield many themes or areas that require union action. Depending on the capacity and resources of the organisation, the union or its leadership may decide to set up action plans for the most important trends (e.g. top three or top five) in each category. Therefore, prioritisation is key!
Once you have completed your SWOT analysis, review the Tool Kit materials section on Core Materials (link) and decide how you can best move from the SWOT analysis into setting goals and prioritising problems (link), creating a strategic plan (link) and taking action.
The Toolkit materials offers guidance on how unions can use and build power resources in developing campaigns and organising (link), collective bargaining (link), organisational transformation (link) or advocacy work (link).
Additional information about how SWOT analysis has been used by other unions can be found in the article “SWOT Analysis, Strategy Development and Power Resources” by Melisa R Serrano and Bastian Schulz
Community Tool Box (Undated). Section 14. SWOT Analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Available at: https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/assessment/assessing-community-needs-and-resources/swot-analysis/main.