Employee Involvement
Even if the employees are not directly involved in the decision making process of the company, there always exist the window for participation as individuals. There has been a rise in interest in these areas recently. This has been caused due to involvement of the government as well as by the sharp eyes of the employees who have seen that by this manner more commitment is observed from the employers. The initiatives of this type, is quite useful in conditions where unions are not present. This kind of absence ensures that the managers are able to feel the nerve of the employee organization.
The direct involvement of the employee for running the company is not at all discordant with formation of associations such as trade unions. These things are however mostly taken up by the employers firstly. The very critical writers often see these things as the process by which the growth of the trade union is stunted. The suggestion that these writers provide is that if the employees desire to participate directly, then that can be satisfied by use of the initiatives of people. It is very much evident from some surveys, that few employers specially take up the initiative to accommodate employees in management and discourage the formation of the unions for trade. Some other reasons are given below:
- The employees of the company like being involved in the process and greatly support the initiatives.
- The commitment of the organization increases owing to involvement of the employees.
- The employees henceforth accept things quite easily here.
- The involvement of the people ensures that the turnover of the staffs is at a low level.
Theoretically speaking, the involvement of the employees ensures that the involvement of the employees causes a great deal of improving of the performance of the organization. There are of course some evidences to support this kind of claim. The limitations of methods to continue with this kind of research, is provided by Marchington. It can be said with a certain degree of certainty that the employees obviously are fond of involvement of people. They prefer organizations which believe in participation rather than being autocratic in nature. This kind of evidence is not strong enough to be provided in cases of justifications regarding improvement in performance of the organizations. The claims made however are quite persuasive in nature and will be able to provide explanations regarding growth in places of direct involvement with the organization.
State the extent to which your performance would suffer when individual employees are present in your office? What kind of commitment level will you have towards your company?
The mostly used types of straightforward involvement present in the UK, is seen in briefing of teams, the printing of the news sheets of the company over web as well as different schemes of suggestions provided. The concept of team work, is not quite common, however it has been able to garner a lot of interest among the different research fellows as individuals are involved. The colleagues of yours would also be involved in the process; hence you will have a lot of control over your work. Hence this is a really potent form of individual involvement.
Team briefing
On course of the briefings of the teams, lots of things are attempted to be done at the same time. This will ensure that information from a position of authority is getting circulated regularly. Hence the people will have a fair idea regarding the happenings of the place. The information can obviously be used to reach the targets of production and other objectives of the organization. Everything is provided on the face so that there remains ground for different clarifications to take place. The role that the supervisors as well as managers will play, will provide with loads of information.
The team briefings are often used for flow of information or different messages from the managerial department. The different teams can be found clustering round a particular area of service. This is not specific to a particular occupation and instead consists of a dozen of people. The person acting as leader is actually the manager or supervisor. This person must have the required skills and briefings. The different meetings would not be continuing for more than half an hour. A time slot is also required to be allotted for the various employees to ask questions. The meetings must be arranged from before and is required to be held periodically.
If some discipline and goodwill is instilled in the services, then the briefings of the teams can be extremely valuable in getting involvement of the different employees. Here dealings regarding information take place. In a traditional setup, there exists a managerial view where people working, are not at all interested in anything different from immediate or short term stuffs. The status of the manager is actually determined by coming to know about things that the other people involved are not aware of. It is because of this that the different managers present in the chain of communication have to remain committed in order to make the event a really grand success. The process of team briefing, actually gets to be easy in nature, once it has got the recognition of being a regular affair. It is really important to ensure that the enthusiasm showed by the management does not die down as soon enough the employees would be getting very much used to the process.
During times of recession, the process of team briefing actually gets a big boost. This is because of the fact that the managements break bad news to the people during that time. When time as well as money gets lost, there is usually a lot of explaining to be done to the workforce as to how bad the situation really is. If this is not done, then these people may even end up asking for raises during that period. Irrespective of the economy, the team briefings are important.
Quality circles
The concept of quality circles actually had their origin in different Japanese firms. Here you will find small number of employees clustered in groups. These people meet up regularly to discuss how they would bring about improvement in the products. The people from the group can also be sued as individuals who would help in solving of problems. The opinion of the employee in transmitted to the management hierarchy in this fashion. There exist some quality circles, where the staffs work together as a team and perform different functions in the organization. Some people are involved in functions involving different departments of the company. These people can hence become a part of management of quality as observed in cases of the 11th chapter.
Lots of objectives are supposed to be achieved by these practices. These people definitely bring about an increase in the number of ideas that a particular company holds. The cooperative kind of relationship at the workplace is also appreciated out here. The practices are based on the guess that the employees may be considered to be providing some kind of advantage of competitive nature to the different organizations.
It can hence definitely be concluded that the quality circles provide with invaluable ideas for the company as well as save costs. The thoughts and experiences of the people are also can be used up here. Hence the overall impact would be positive in nature.
News sheets
The employees also get quite involved, when different journals are published on a regular basis from the company in paper or electrical form. From one point it will be seen that information is being provided by the mangers to the employees regarding subjects of finance as well as policy making for the company. This kind of involvement of the employee can be termed as limited which does not serve any good purpose. The employees just have an idea regarding what is going on in the company and are not involved in anything. If direct involvement of the employees is needed to occur, then the news sheet is also required to be interactive in nature. This sheet can be termed as a way by which the employees are asked about new things. A platform is created where the complaints can be lodged.
Attitude Surveys
The opinion of the employee is required to be known by the employer quite regularly. This is needed to be done especially, if no unions exist in the company to provide the management a picture of what is going on in the company. The responses got are often of the anonymous type. The people may simply be naming the department where they work hence comparison between the departments will be taking place easily. When surveys are carried out, it is wise to ask those same old questions and repeat them as differences in answers will be tracked in this fashion.
The serious problems which are related to the attitude surveys, are regarding situations where these problems are not given due importance. This can well lead to angry people in the workforce. The climate in employee relation would hence be as poor as when no survey had taken place. Similar things happen when suggestions are taken from the employees and then ignored, resulting in outrage.
Team Working
The concept of teamwork can be referred to as a predecessor to the various independent working groups. Two famous incidents come to memory when this is discussed. One incident was in a Volvo plant and another certain vague movement called QWL. At Volvo, two different aims were observed which wished to improve upon the quality that was observed in people of the worker class and thus causing an increase in the productivity.
By team work, focus is brought on the activities of people working in small groups of half a dozen or dozen people. These people support each other very much and also have the ability to work without much supervision. The management would be allocating certain targets for these people. The people would be consulted before a task is given and the entire team would decide the manner in which the task would be completed. It is seen that the team would be organizing all its activities by itself and prepare about the process too. A leader is also chosen who decides upon the modus operandi. Hence by team work there exists a certain degree of control over the workers. The managers do not come every day for supervision but of course can be approached to get some advices. The task of imparting some discipline to the employees is carried on by the managers. By the use of teamwork, different teams from a particular region actually compete with one another to emerge superior. The remuneration received is then divided proportionally.
Links of Previous Main Topic:-
- Strategic aspects of development
- Context competence competencies
- Learning and development
- Career development
- Strategic aspects of employee relations
- Key trends in employee relations
- The study of employee relations
- Collective employee involvement
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