-75%
Solution
- Employee involvement and participation
Employee involvement is defined as a set of initiatives which offer opportunities for employees to share ideas and suggestions to different issues affecting them. According to van Assen (2021), this lead to their commitment but limited authority in decision making with strategies adopted including suggestion schemes and quality circles.
Employees participation is identified in Behravesh et al. (2021) as employees having a direct say in making the organisations decisions and formally engaged in joint consultations and work councils.
Differences
The main difference of the employee involvement and participation is informed by scope of their engagement. For example, Neirotti (2020) identify employees involvement as defining the scope of employees leveraging on opportunities of taking part in making the decisions. The employees consultation is pursued with their opinions prioritised prior ultimate decisions made.
On the other hand, employees participation entail an active engagement of staff in active decisions making. In this case, employees leverage on opportunity of providing input and say in the eventual decision made.
Another difference of the two is informed by the degree of participation. According to Ma et al. (2021), involvement entail providing commenting and advising others. Nevertheless, with their input being recognised and appreciated, the ultimate/final decision is made by the management. This strategy is informed by need to develop a sense of ownership and staff exercise of their roles. Conversely, the employees participation include having an enormous input to the ultimate outcomes. The people are part of the decision making structure and input influencing results of determinations which results.
Building Effective Relationships
Employee involvement and participation include evident strategies used to develop successful employment relations. To start with, inclusion of the employees lead to a feeling that they are supposed to offer opinions on different decisions which impact them and hence sense of ownership. The actions assists in building employees trust with management teams. This is when opinions are prioritised fostering appropriate work relations with a capacity of ensuring employees satisfaction in their job and high-level loyalty (BELLA, 2023).
For employees participation, it entail a direct involvement of staff in decision making strategy where they are offered an active responsibility in regard to identification of goals, formulate strategy and solve entire challenges. The strategy encourage staff and making decisions democratically, prioritising employees interests fully. Tahe outcome of use of varying perspective and innovative ideas assist in creating a culture of mutual-based respect and collaboration thereby achieving improved employment relations.
Employee involvement entails employee’s input in the decision-making process of the organization while working in the same task and employee participation refers to employee performance in actual business activities. The major difference identified by Sampson, (2018), between employee involvement and employee participation is that the firmer refers to input in a business decision they are joined with, while the latter talks about actual business tasks performed by workers. Through team approach employee participation fosters, while involvement developed through appropriate conversation and empowerment of workers. However, both these approaches help meet the organization’s goal of better performance and strong relationships with stakeholders. Through the incorporation of employee involvement and participation approach, Makite can improve their employee engagement and reduce their internal conflicts. Continuous monitoring is essential in maintaining a balance between the approaches to improve organizational culture.
However, it has been identified that employee involvement is more complex and requires training and motivational methods such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, Herzberg’s two-factor theory to improve organizational involvement. The hierarchical structure of businesses finds it difficult to implement employee involvement strategies as they are more focused on managerial authority (Osborne and Hammoud, 2017). A flat structure, on the other hand, is more effective in addressing employee participation and involvement approaches. Employee participation, on the other hand, improves employee morale and builds an inclusive workplace. While employee participation focuses on stimulating employee’s ideas in decision-making, involvement prompted individual workers to achieve an objective by contributing their ideas and performance for the organization as involvement includes “one-on-one approach between the employee and management” (Difference between, 2014).
- Forms of union and non-union employee representation
Union Representation
Trade Union– An example of this is Unite in UK. The trade unions represent formal employees organisations bargaining with employers on wage, employment conditions and other workplace issues (Thomas & Doerflinger, 2020). They are formal involved in bargaining with the employers pertaining to their wages, employment terms and different work conditions. They possess legal right of negotiation for their employees to ensure they have strong voice in presentation of their issue to management. The scope of support is legal assistance such as legal representation hence safeguard to staff (Goldstein, 2022).
The trade union members are protected by the laws of trade unions and therefore employers cannot charge any claim of unfair dismissal against them (O’Sullivan et al. 2015). On the other hand, unofficial industrial action when conducted by any employee is subjected to dismissal by the employer. A strike is one example of unofficial industrial action conducted by employees. As per evaluation, employers have the right to take action against the employee participating in a strike as it justifies breaching the contract. Moreover, Section 238A of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 secures employee rights who are under trade union (Qureshi, 2018). However, when in case of participating in unofficial actions employees cannot be protected by the law and claim for unfair dismissal. Wildcat strikes are an example of unofficial action in the industrial context. In this strike, it can be observed that employees walk out of their allocated tasks without proper consent of their unions. However, collective bargaining rule is not followed in this type of strikes which hampers the whole process. There is a requirement of ballot in the process of strike that has not been followed in case of wildcat strike. However, the ballot system helps in getting opinion of each employee to conduct a particular process.
Non-Union Representation
Work Council– These entail the formally selected bodies which are inclusive of employees offering input in areas of policy making and initiatives with management teams. The work councils are not involved in negotiating on wages but through negotiations and consultations, they make sure optimum work conditions in workplace (Addison et al., 2023). They assists in eliminating barriers for a successful communication amongst the employees and employers and playing the role of an opportunity for employees making suggestions and contributing to active decision making on issues which impact their workplace conditions.
Wildcat strikes are an example of unofficial action in the industrial context. In this strike, it can be observed that employees walk out of their allocated tasks without proper consent of their unions. However, collective bargaining rule is not followed in this type of strikes which hampers the whole process. There is a requirement of ballot in the process of strike that has not been followed in case of wildcat strike. However, the ballot system helps in getting opinion of each employee to conduct a particular process.
Similarities
The unions and non-union forms of representation are intended in protecting and advocating staff rights and interest. Irrespective of if it is collective bargaining or direct communication, they are involved in enhancing work condition, improved wages and benefitting their staff (Goldstein, 2022).
Another similarity of the two approaches include providing opportunity and approaches for managing disputes and raised complaints in working environment. They are both independent playing the role of intermediary for staff and management for approving how they treat them and enforcement of all policies which are a common agreement amongst the parties.
Differences
The union representation is basically formalised and structured including legal bidding collective bargaining agreement. According to Doellgast and Benassi (2020), the agreements go through negotiation by union representations in areas of employment such as pay, benefit and work conditions. Conversely, the non-union representation including the employees forums and working councils are formal. They enhance one-on-one engagement amongst the staff and management with limited requirement of coming up with legal agreements (Atapattu & Huybers, 2022).
Also, the union representations offer the staff with strong negotiation skills owing to the collective power of the union leading to improved wages and benefits. This is different from non-union reps which provide limited negotiation power since employees negotiate personally or by involving less formalised groups. The outcome of this is prompt resolution and not at all times achieving similar scope of gains in union representation scope (Rollins et al., 2021).
The employee action that is conducted by the members of the trade union is considered official employee action. In this case, the trade union authorizes the activities of the members to make them official (O’Sullivan et al. 2015). However, as per analysis, it can be highlighted that the members who are not part of any trade union cannot participate in official industrial action. On the other hand, industrial actions that are not authorized by trade unions are considered unofficial actions. A strike is an unofficial industrial action conducted by the employees (van der Kolk, van Veen-Dirks, and ter Bogt, 2019). It can be observed that when employers can take legal action against the employee for participating in unofficial action. However, the employees do not have any right to claim unfair dismissal after being dismissed for taking part in unofficial actions.
- Relationship of employee voice and organisation performance
Employee voice addresses the notion of issues faced by the employees and contributes to problem-solving and decision-making processes. It is important to understand that direct employee voice influences day-to-day activities. In this scenario, the leader and employee establish direct communication, while in an indirect relationship; managers serve as mediators and help in addressing organizational issues affecting employee well-being and their performance. Naqvi, (2020), in their study, establishes relationships with supervisor delegation, workplace inclusion, and employee voice behaviour. At the end of this discussion, supervisor delegation and employee voice behaviour have a strong relationship, and it also contributes to employee engagement within the organization. Workplace inclusion is also related to promotional voice behaviour. Ruck et al. (2017), in their study refers that “If employee voice is listened to and acted upon employees may respond with heightened engagement”. It improves physical employee engagement.
It has been further observed that employee voice is very much dependent on employee motivation. Motivated employees feel confident to express their opinion regarding operation activities. Della Torre et al. (2021), in their study, mentioned that small and medium enterprises (SME) tend to use informal communication in managing employee relationships as they face several issues such as resource constraints, lack of HRM, and managerial capabilities. Makite as an SME logistics company has to adopt appropriate employee voice tools and methods to address their employee concerns. Innovation is also supported by this notion as employees provide their opinion on innovation and creativity. The open communication approach will help the organization to establish relationships between leaders and employees. It will help in improving the decision-making process within the organization.
The measurement of actually gained output and intended output of the organizations can be termed organizational performance. However, there is a strong connection between employee voice and organizational performance. Employee voice can be observed to be contributing to an effective communication process. It can be analysed that employee voice improves intrinsic motivation of the employees and thereby improves their engagement in the organizational activities.
- Concept of better working lives and designing
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