Employee Communication & Involvement - Week 25

Difference between Employee Participation and Employee Involvement :

Employee participation stems from the puralistic view that everyone within an organisation has different interests and conflicts, which need to be managed. For example employees maybe interested in increasing their pay while managers and leaders will be interested in increasing the profits of the business, therefore conflict will occur. Many organisations involve trade unions when conflict arises. Employee participation means that staff have some say in decisions and trade unions protect the interests of employees when there is resistance from management. If employees are allowed to participate in decisions that affect them they are likely to be more productive and motivated. Many businesses allow their employees to be part of a Trade Union, and staff can approach the trade Union if they have any grievances against their employer.

Employee involvement stems from the unitarist view and is different from employee participation in that all members of an organisation whether they are managers or employees, have the same goals and interests, therefore they will work towards achieving a common set of goals almost like a football team. Employee involvement means staff have a say in matters involving their jobs, working conditions, working environment etc. If members of staff are able to feel involved in decisions that affect their working life they are unlikely to want to join a union therefore both the employee and employer benefits. Employee involvement is about management wanting to incourage individual employees to be committed to the business and its values.

Many organisations now involve employees in decision making in the following ways:

1) Sharing information - this is important because employees feel they are updated and involved with everything that is going on in the business. Information can be shared via social network sites, email and roadshows.

2) Individuals - many organisations encourage their employees to take part in surveys, which look at things such as what type of benefits they would like to receive, what they think of their line managers and leaders etc. This information is then used to improve working conditions, benefits etc so that the staff feel they have had a say in how the business is run.

3) Financial participation - Profit related pay means that if the organisation has performed well, then the employees are rewarded accordingly. This also includes share schemes for employees and this is benefical for both the employer and employee because they are both working to the same goal.

Social networking sites as a means of involving employees

Communication helps to build the psychological contract, in which employees feel valued by their employer, and the employer values employees contributions. Employees feel more involved if they have:

1) The opportunity to feed information onto management

2) They are well-informed of what is happening in the organisation

Many organisations use social networking sites to keep their employees updated as well as advertising job vacancies:

Some organisations use a company intranet and extranet to communicate with employees. This intranet can be used by staff to look for current job vacancies, search for up to date information on products, and day-to-day issues such as bad weather and problems people have had getting into work.

Bucks New University use facebook to communicate with the students to keep them updated. On facebook the students can ask questions about issues they may have and on the group page students can see what events are taking place. This is useful because facebook is a common social networking site and people are familar with how this works.

MySpace is another social networking site which is used by the likes of the Tesco's and others to communicate with employees. Tesco employees use this site to communicate with one another on such issues as to what sort of day they had at work.

Other social network sites such as Twitter and Bebo are used by Universities and other companies such as Deloitte. These sites are used to keep people informed of what events are happening and allows for employees to be involved.

Conclusion

It is important for employees to be involved as they perform better if they feel valued and are happy at work. Equally if the organisation listens to the needs of their employees they will have loyal staff and there will be less staff leaving the organisation. Communication is therefore vital for both employer and employee as it leads to good employee engagement and results.

Reference list:

Times Online [online]. Available from: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/career_and_jobs/best_100_companies/ [Accessed on 2nd of May 2010].

CIPD - employee communication [online]. Available from: http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/empreltns/comconslt/empcomm.htm [Accessed 2nd of May 2010].

(Myspace (2010) Tesco [online]. Available at: http://www.myspace.com/9944826 [Accessed on 2nd of May 2010].