In every organisation and Business, it is vital for the employee to feel as though they can communicate with their managers and employers and feel like they can express their opinions and voice concerns. It is a healthy thing to do in a Business, opening doors from growth and fresh ideas. It can be hard to differentiate from employee participation and employee involvement as both are similar within a work place environment.
Employee participation is said to stem from a pluralist approach. The point of employee participation is to involve the staff is having say in some decisions. Employee participation is supported by legislation and gives a right to employees to be involved in consultation on matters that will affect them personally and not just the business. This may be on matters such as the economy or issues that will affect employee status.
Involvement on the other hand, is more personal. Laurie J. Mullins stated that
“It is important that staff themselves should also feel a sense of involvement and know how they can play their part in achieving the goals and objectives of the organisation”.
Employee involvement is more about a manager’s desire and belief that encouragement towards an individual will enforce commitment to the organisation and reinforce the values.
There are different categories that are involved in employee involvement:
- Sharing information
- Consultation
- Financial participation
- Quality improvements
- Individuals
- Community
Employees can involve staff in making decisions by holding staff meetings and brief staff about upcoming ideas and events and allowing them to brain storm and create ideas and voice opinions. Another way on allowing staff to be involved in decision making is by using ‘Staff Suggestion Schemes’. This allows staff the opportunity to suggest to their managers what they feel need could be improved on without feeling pressure to reveal their identity. Another way of involving staff would be to hand out ‘Staff Opinion Surveys’ to employees. Checking staffs opinions on a range of issues allow opinions to be voiced and allow staff to feel like the managers care and want to know about their problems and concerns.
As many organisations are using social networking sites as a way of keep staff involved, I looked around for up to date fashion sites that caught my attention. H&M are a leading high fashion brand that offers a wide selection of clothes to women and men. They offer up a unique experience on ‘Facebook’ which allow potential employees the chance to become involved in the H&M experience before they apply for the job. The site offers up a lot of different options such as “About H&M”, “Store Locator”, “Customer Service”, “Working At H&M”, “Corporate Responsibility”, “All For Children”, “Social Media Room”, “H&M On Twitter”, and “H&M On Youtube”. The website also offers a ‘discussion’ page for people interested in H&M to discuss job availability, new trends, prices and other related topics. Other social networking sites available to H&M are Twitter and Youtube, both provide the store with a wide audience and could potentially gather more customers due to the publicity online.
Referencing:
L.J.Mullins Management & Organisational Behaviour (2010) 9th Edition.
All 15 blogs posted well done!
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