Week 25 Communication and Involvement

 Explain the difference between employee participation and employee involvement. How can organisations involve employees in decision - making? Think of three examples to illustrate practice.

Evans (2004) stated that the meaning of employee participation is involving employees in decision making or that ideas are heard by the managers. Also this provided lots of advantages, for example, as the employees voices are being heard. This will lead to cutting down on conflicts and every staff is up to date with the company proceeds. Usually employees involvement is represented by an appointed by employee. For example, in university, or schools they have Student Reps which represent students and they carried the voices of students and present them to the principles. But the employees are restricted on the levels of control.

Mathis and Jackson (2008) stated that the meaning of employee involvement is encouraging employees to be involved in decision making as individuals and sharing information with each other.
According to Mathis and Jackson (2008) to get staff more involve in decision making and having more suggestions from them, the companies could use numbers of tools such suggestions box, more general meeting and these can encourage employees to say their views and may improve their relationships between staff.

The three examples that company use to encourage staff involvement or participation.
Consultation usually refers to staff suggestion schemes, for example, John Lewis use a suggestion box which is near the exit for staff. Also companies can gather staffs opinion by carrying out surveys, for example; River Island send out questionnaires every 6 months to every staff and to encourage them to fill them out the questionnaire there will be surprise prise given out.

According to The institute for Employment Studies (2001) (ise), financial participation usually refers to profit related to pay, for example, group and individual bonuses. Another meaning is share schemes for employees and this usually leads to a right to vote in an organisation. The advantages of is retaining staff from competitors and employees feel they have more power.

Taloy and Hall (2005) stated that individual involvement means empowering employees, for example, training and development opportunities. According to the Business dictionary (n.d) employee involvement is usually refers to decision making as individual or workgroup level. As employees gets to make their own decisions they are more likely to improve the commitments towards the company.


 Many organisations are now using social networking sites as a means of involving their staff, both for existing staff and potential recruits. Go online and find examples of how this works. What sort of information is provided? Which social networks are being used?

As technology improves, social web becomes more potential and organisation has identified news way of recruiting new potential staff. For example; a survey that was carried by Top Ten Reviews (2010) stated that Facebook, Myspace and Twitter were in the top ten. The ratings are based on their profile settings, security and net working features. All organisation are mostly concern with the security of the sites because there will be confidential data such as personal information. If this is not deal with properly it will be breaching the Data Protection Act.
If companies are recruiting online and is using social web site as a tool such as Facebook then companies need to take precaution because not many companies has taken this on board. There are some advantages such as can reach global targets but there are some disadvantages, for example, the accuracy of the profiles.

Another advantage of using social web site is that it can improve communication between staff (CIPD, 2010). Also works and ideas can be more creative and efficient especially creative jobs such as marketing / advertising, product developments as they may need inspiration.
In business views social web site can provides lots of opportunities, for example, to attract customers, investors or other stakeholders. Another major advantage is that it provides an easier way to communicate to everyone and it improves trust between each other because usually these social networking sits contains lots of personal data that is not related to work.

Social web sites can provide a lot of information that will be considered important to companies, such as marital status, their ages, rough idea of their location and companies can uses this information to attract new candidates.



Conclusion
It is important for staff to have their opinion and ideas to be heard within organisation. Also staff need to be empower because it will motivate them.
It is important for any organisation to adapt new ways of communication, for example, social websites because it provides convinces for the organisation.


Bibliography and Reference

B net (n.d) Business dictionary [online] Available at: http://dictionary.bnet.com/definition/employee+involvement.html [Accessed 4 May 2010]

Bevan, S and Reilly, P (2001) Employee financial participation. Ise [online] Available at: http://www.employment-studies.co.uk/pubs/summary.php?id=373 [Accessed 4 May 2010]

CIPD (2010) Employee communication [online] Available at: www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/empreltns/comconslt/empcomm.htm [Accessed 2 March 2010]

Evans, D (2004) Supervisory management principle and practice [online] Available at: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=b6Of2LsJV0kC&pg=PA520&dq=employee+participation+management&cd=2#v=onepage&q=employee%20participation%20management&f=false [Accessed 30 April 2010]


Mathis, R and Jackson, J (2008) Human resource management [online] Available at: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_yCe7fiQbokC&pg=PA545&dq=employee+involvement++management&cd=4#v=onepage&q=employee%20involvement%20%20management&f=false [Accessed 30 April 2010]

Taloy, S and Hall, L (2005) Human resource management [online] Available at: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CIcmwkH_C8wC&pg=PA462&dq=individual+involvement&cd=1#v=onepage&q=individual%20involvement&f=false [Accessed 4 May 2010]

Top Ten Review (2010) Social networking websits review [online] Available at: http://social-networking-websites-review.toptenreviews.com/ [Accessed 2 March 2010]