Evaluation of Human Resource Management on Employee Involvement and Participation - Coursework Example

Evaluation of human resource management on employee involvement and participation Introduction Employee involvement refers to a range of processes designed to engage the support, understanding, commitment and contribution of employees in the decision making process to attain the objectives of a firm. Employee involvement is thought to be more flexible and to result in a commonality of interests between employees and the management of the firm (Faulkner, 2002). Through employee involvement, the behavior and the culture of the organization are influenced and changed respectively (Lewis, 2007). On the other hand, employee participation refers to a process of employee involvement that is designed to provide employees of a firm with opportunities to influence the decision-making process of the firm by exerting upward and countervailing pressure on the management (Gottlieb, 2007). Employee participation is related to adversarial model of relation at workplace. Employee participation can either be direct or indirect (Hennig-Thurau and Hansen, 2000). The continuum of employee participation consists of no involvement, reception of information, joint consultation, joint decision making or employee control. Worker control is a characteristic of Marxists, collective bargaining and joint consultation is a characteristic of pluralists while unitarist is characterized by downward communications and employee involvement and participation is task based. Worker control was witnessed in 1960s to early 1980s. Collective bargaining and joint consultation has been in existence since 1920s up to date. Employee involvement and task-based participation came into limelight from early 1980s and is still being embraced up to date. This paper discus the impact of employee involvement and participation on HRM practices. Employee involvement The influence of HRM in firms is seen through the linkage between employee involvement and performance (Newell & Grashina, 2003). Management theorists argue that employee involvement is introduced in a firm for three main reasons: economic, moral, and behavioral reasons. Under employee involvement, performance is seen as a function of motivation, ability and opportunity (Burke, 2002). Thus, HRM are involved in rigorous selection and better training programs to increase the ability levels of the newly recruited employees. To enhance motivation, comprehensive incentives are provided to employees. By complementing these two activities with participative structures, opportunity to contribute to the attainment of the goals of the firm is improved (Faulkner, 2002). Such HR practices which enhance ability, motivation, and opportunity results in expansion of employee potential in addition to increasing discretionary effort. It also results in improvement of systemic response to the efforts of employees. Consequently, the performance of a company is improved and worker outcomes are improved (Mudie and Pirrie, 2006). Employee involvement consists of team working, downward communication, team briefing, suggestion schemes, two way communications, financial participation, and problem solving groups (Baker & Campbell, 2003). Engagement is also a characteristic of employee involvement, which requires that employees be able to understand, identify, and be committed to the organization’s objectives (Gottlieb, 2007). Thus, HR professionals are compelled to manage engagement as a strategic issue instead of leaving engagement to manage itself (Howard, 2006). Employee involvement promotes cooperation and builds common interest in addition to resolving conflicts in workplace (Miner, 2005). Furthermore, employee involvement ensures that inherent knowledge of the employees is utilized in improving the performance of the firm. By allowing employees to participate in decision-making, information pertaining optimal policies is increased. For instance, employee involvement in design and the implementation of strategic safety policy can result in improvement of the safety of the workplace for both psychological and informational reasons (Faulkner, 2002). The involvement of employee in strategic planning takes place on company time and thus employees act as paid consultants. As such, employees are able to identify cost effective safety improvements. This encourages workers to be involved in risky production processes hence they are able to identify and monitor risk at a lower cost as opposed to when it is done solely by managers of the firm or external consultants (Burke, 2002). By being involved in the introduction of new technologies of production, employees are able to raise concerns about risk exposures during the decision making process. This can be helpful to the firm in reduction of turnover and can also increase the morale of employees at the firm and help in maintaining the stock of specific human capital of the firm. All this enhance safety and performance of the said firm (Lewis, 2007). By participating in decision-making process, employees are able to pick up information concerning workplace risk (Baker & Campbell, 2003). This helps to reduce uncertainty in the minds of employees and hence result in the increment of the value of employment experience for those employees who are risk averse (Goethals and Sorenson, 2006). These results in the lowering of employment costs and the productivity of employees may be improved to the level where safety behaviors of workers depend on their attitudes. The resulting improved moral leads to increased productivity of employees (Mudie and Pirrie, 2006). Employees also take ownership of decisions made if they are involved in their design and implementation process (Gottlieb, 2007). Thus, they increase their commitment to the successful implementation of the programs. This improves the performance of the firm in general. Employee participation The evolution of employee participation emerges from a collective employee interest for optimizing the physical, security and inspirational conditions under which the workers are contracted to serve (Lewis, 2007). Such ambitions may receive backing from political ideas, systems, and parties, which are sensitive to potential deprivations that are found in the unregulated market operations. Employee participation started gaining prominence in 1970s (Newell & Grashina, 2003). During this time, there were confrontational stances, which were common in the traditional voluntarist industrial relations, which could not accommodate the joint concessions required by the parties for the adoption of alternative participative arrangements (Hennig-Thurau and Hansen, 2000). Thus to ensure employee participation various forms of employee groupings emerged to forge the interests of the employees (Goethals and Sorenson, 2006). These included work councils (common in European countries), board representation, and collective employee share schemes. In recent times, the state has influenced the employee participation by regulating the activities of industrial participants in order to maintain a perceived balance between the rights and obligations of the labor force and of the capital (Gottlieb, 2007). These relations change and shaped by the prevailing political, legal, economic, and competitive environment in which it operates. Employee participation level and nature depends highly on four factors. First, is that managers and employee representative are able to determine and exchange their own respective agendas. Second is that the management and employee representatives are able to develop a positive cooperative climate together (Baker & Campbell, 2003). Third is that both parties concur that they have different goals and objectives in cooperative activities and hence try to define means that may be able to attain them simultaneously (Nicholas, 2004). The final factor is the existence of arenas and procedures for resolving conflicts between employees and the management (Burke, 2002). Thus, theoretically, the implication is that employee participation and its effects on performance are influenced by various parameters. First are the management policies and strategies concerning employee participation and industrial relations. Second influence is consists of the policies and strategies of the employee toward s management. Third is the level of integration of employees and management interests and activities (Faulkner, 2002). Fourth is the workplace structure of industrial relations. The final influence is the national industrial relations contexts and structures. Revolution in human resource management because of employee involvement Competition that has rocked business firms over the time has forced many firms to adopt new technologies and management practices in addition to making use of new models of work organization (Goethals and Sorenson, 2006). One of the sectors that have been greatly affected is the human resource management (Newell & Grashina, 2003). Under changes that have been witnessed in the HRM practices is the right to participate in decision making process by employees in addition to financial ownership rights in the firm. These are considered high performance HRM practices (Gottlieb, 2007). These practices allow employee involvement in decision-making and in financial returns. The industrial democracy and employee participation have been overtaken by employee involvement in their influence on high-level enterprise decision making. This has been influenced mainly by the elusive search for ways of motivating employees to increase the performance of the firm (Lewis, 2007). This was also influenced by the increased dynamic competition, which has accelerated the demand for technology and shortages in technical and management skills. Thus, management practices have done away with compensatory practices and HRM have realized that employees of a firm can provide a competitive advantage (Baker & Campbell, 2003). Thus, HRM strives to have management practices, which reflect the central importance of employees as assets of the firm that should be utilized to gain optimum competitive advantage of the business. One strand of HRM proposes that employees should considered as an investment whose value can be increased via integrated systems of training, appraisal, development and involvement. It is argued that such ventures are able to identify employees within the central core of the activities of the firm (Goethals and Sorenson, 2006). Thus under these new management practices, employees are the one expected to be flexible, adaptable and easily deployed instead of the firm itself. Thus, the competitive advantage is derived from workforce that is dynamic and not a dynamic firm. The firm’s activities are only seen as dynamic because of the dynamic workforce that it has (Hennig-Thurau and Hansen, 2000). These employee involvement management practices ensure that employees are drawn into the corporate culture and enable them to become committed to the values and objectives of the firm (Miner, 2005). This also enables employees to take task related decision and empower employees to be self-managers instead of acting as passive recipients to management plans. In spite the need for employee involvement, HRM are faced with the problem of taking prompt decisions in some instances (Burke, 2002). This has some harsh implications on the workforce. Due to urgency of market signals, many employers refuse to be deflected by objections of the employees and constitutional obstacles erected by employee unions (Gottlieb, 2007). To fond a solution to this, HRM involves employees in task-based activities and alerts them of the dynamic fierce market environment through systems of information and communication provision. By involving employees in financial fortunes of the firm and in task-based areas of management decision making, HRM is able to reduce adversarial employment relations with their employees (Nicholas, 2004). This approach to management gives employees a say in the affairs of the firm and helps the firm to attain its objectives. Impact of employee involvement and participation on HRM theory HRM theorists argue that there are three main reasons as to why the management may be compelled to introduce in the firm employee involvement schemes. The first reason is based on ethical, political, and moral considerations (Howard, 2006). They argue that since the world is moving toward democratization, workers ought to be involved in the decision making process especially when the outcomes of such decisions influence the lives of the employees’ lives. Thus, employee involvement is a representation of a socially acceptable management style (Hussey, 2000). Since companies desire to project a socially responsible stance on the development of employee communication and involvement, they encourage such issues (Schyns and Meindl, 2006). The second reason is based on the belief that employee involvement improves quality and productivity. It is championed by Japanese management and the model of excellence school in North America (Cameron and Green, 2004). HRM theorists who believe this to be the reason for introducing employee involvement argue that employee participation results in better outcomes for all parties since it improves productivity and allows creation of a more satisfied and energized employees (Howard, 2006). The quality of a decision and the probability of it being implementing is improved by employee involvement and employee participation. The third reason is based on the perennial managerial problems, which are associated with conflict in an organization. Such problems may include inflexibility to change, absenteeism or strikes (Miner, 2005). Thus by introducing employee involvement, such problems may be solved amicably (Burke, 2002). It is argued that introduction of worker participation leads to the creation of a greater coincidence of interests between employers and employees which in turn enhance trust, reduces the potential for conflict and enhances the potential for effective mutual influence process on issues such as employment security, pay and other working conditions (Hennig-Thurau and Hansen, 2000). These theorists argue that employee involvement has changed the union leaders’ attitude that sees employers as an enemy. It also replaces the class struggle with the struggle for markets (Nicholas, 2004). To some extent, employee involvement is introduced by HRM managers to avert union organization. Involvement is one of the concepts in HRM models today. It is argued that participative climate has more substantial effect on the employee satisfaction than participation is specific decisions (Gottlieb, 2007). Employee involvement is associated with empowerment (Howard, 2006). Employee involvement has been found to reduce union support among employees (Hussey, 2000). The HRM practice has changed to the extent that instead of the management making decisions on all platforms, employee involvement allows employees to make individual decisions pertaining g their work and work performance. Thus, employee involvement has brought about some personal freedom and autonomy at workplace (Baker & Campbell, 2003). Thus, this empowerment of employees through employee involvement programs has been hailed for being a powerful and most influential management concepts adopted in many modern firms (Mudie and Pirrie, 2006). It is argued that such programs enable companies to be portfolios of competences and processes that allow provision of opportunities for individual creativity (Goethals and Sorenson, 2006). Thus, employee involvement breaks the traditional hierarch models of management and instead replaces them with individualization of organizational thinking (Lewis, 2007). Therefore, employee involvement allows individual employee devotion and conviction to managerial decisions and replaces the traditional managerial control and disciplinary activities (Newell & Grashina, 2003). Conclusion Employee involvement refers to a range of processes designed to engage the support, understanding, commitment and contribution of employees in the decision making process to attain the objectives of a firm. On the other hand, employee participation refers to a process of employee involvement that is designed to provide employees of a firm with opportunities to influence the decision-making process of the firm by exerting upward and countervailing pressure on the management. Competition that has rocked business firms over the time has forced many firms to adopt new technologies and management practices in addition to making use of new models of work organization. One of the sectors that have been greatly affected is the human resource management. Under changes that have been witnessed in the HRM practices is the right to participate in decision making process by employees in addition to financial ownership rights in the firm. The HRM practice has changed to the extent that instead of the management making decisions on all platforms, employee involvement allows employees to make individual decisions pertaining g their work and work performance. Thus, employee involvement has brought about some personal freedom and autonomy at workplace, which enhance creativity. The role of HRM to deal with labor unions is reducing drastically because of employee involvement, which is reducing the role played by unions. In addition, employee involvement breaks the traditional hierarch models of management and instead replaces them with individualization of organizational thinking. Therefore, employee involvement allows individual employee devotion and conviction to managerial decisions and replaces the traditional managerial control and disciplinary activities that characterized previous HRM practices. References Baker, S. & Campbell, M. 2003. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Project Management, 3rd ed. London: Alpha Books. Burke, W., 2002. Organisation Change: Theory and Practice. New York Sage Publishers. Cameron, E., and Green, M. 2004. Making Sense of Change Management: a Complete Guide to Models and Tools. London: Kogan Page Publishers. Faulkner, M. 2002. Customer Management Excellence. London: Macmillan Publishers. Goethals, G. and Sorenson, G., 2006. The Quest for a General Theory of Leadership. New York: Edward Elgar Publishers. Gottlieb, M. 2007. 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