Employees, the strongest pillar of the organization are the most valuable asset that contributes significantly to its success and prosperity. The involvement of employees in the organizational operation not only motivates them but also enables them to contribute more effectively and efficiently. Further, employee involvement as a process involving participation, communication, decision making which leads to industrial democracy and employee motivation. Employee involvement is defined as a commitment of the employees towards the values of the organisation and willingness to help each other to achieve the organisational goal. The results are not only to increase job satisfaction, or motivation but the increasing performance of that organisation. In short, employee involvement is creating an environment where people have a continuous impact on decisions and actions that affect their jobs.
Employee Involvement vs Employee Participation
Employee involvement and employee participation are like two sides of a coin. Both are supplementary to each other and existence of one depends on the other. There is not any significant difference between the two terms. Participation is an act of sharing information and the meaning of involvement is the day-to-day activity of the organization. The term participation is used as a voice of the employee in the decision making process and to describe different types of involvement of employee in the organization’s affair. Participation is any organizational arrangement under which employees have some sort of share in some aspect of the business which is not specific types of employee involvement.
Employee involvement calls for participation which is all about sharing information, training, mutual decision making process whereas traditional participative management views participation as a part of other organizational process. Employee participation is as an umbrella term covering all forms of employee influence in the organization. Employee involvement is used to describe managerially inspired initiatives aimed at winning employee commitment, as part of the practices of industrial democracy, whose aim is to increase the rights of employees to participate in management decisions. This not only results in enhanced employee morale but also retaining the potential manpower resulting in lower attrition rate.
Employee Involvement and Employee Empowerment
The concept of employee involvement is incomplete without it being associated with employee empowerment. There cannot be a single or simple definition of empowerment as empowerment seen as a recent development after increase employee involvement. Empowerment is the next step of employee involvement means where the employees have the power to take decisions. Employee empowerment is a means for involving team members as business partners in determining company success or failure. The real essence of which comes from releasing the knowledge, experience, and motivational power that is already in people but is being severely underutilized. In short it can be said that employee involvement leads to empowerment of the employees in different management decision process.
Importance of Employee involvement
The increasing competition and technological changes in the last 20 years have demanded higher skills and flexibility from the employees for the organisation. The highly competitive environment needs a different strategic approach to manage the employees. In order to achieve that the jobs needs to be broader. The jobs structure should be made with proper planning and implementation to improve the performance unless just to maintain it. This situation leads to formation of teams, which are accountable for the performance. Employee involvement not only maintained the standard of the operation process but gives emphasis on continuous improvement and it is reflecting the requirement of the market place. Further the employee involvement come into focus in the early 90s when the employer looking for a participative way to manage the work force.
The other important aspect of employee involvement is the increases job security of the employees by offering them priority in training and retraining. The training equipped them with the skill and knowledge that the job demands. Greater employee commitment leads a growing expectancy to better job satisfaction and performance. It is difficult for the organisation in current business scenario to improve the performance without employee commitment towards the organization’s mission and objective. Employee involvement allows the employee to input their views and ideas on performance and the quality of the service. This will lead the development where the employees want to be part of successful organisation, which provides them a good income and opportunity to enhance their skills for a secure employment. The engaged employees significantly contributes to the success of the organisation to achieve the goal and objective. Also employee involvement could give competitive advantage in the market. It can help to reduce turnover and increase the productivity.