Human Resource Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Human Resource Management - Essay Example To achieve positive outcomes for both the organization and the individual employee, many an organization have resorted to the application of Employee Involvement (EI). Ulrich (1996, pp. 12) notes that EI has helped many organizations respond to business challenges besides improving their economic performances. Such organizations have adopted many strategies, ranging from customer satisfaction, quality circles, teamwork, participatory decision making, consultative committees, work life quality, total quality management, and many more. The most important pre-requisite in copping with these strategies is the employees’ and managers’ willingness to change the manner in which work in their organizations was traditionally done . EI has increased processes and practices that are being utilized by organizations. However, despite EI programs being available from a long time, their contributions in improving the performance of organizations has not yet been clearly recognized or understood. Employee Involvement and Participation Employee involvement involves exerting an upward and countervailing pressure on management by employees. Additionally, it is associated with the adversarial model of relations in a workplace. Employee participation can either be direct or indirect. Employee involvement engages the consideration of common interests between employees and management. The information communication, financial involvement, consultations, problem solving, worker directors, among others are all aimed at influencing the behavior of employees and changing organizational culture. Organizations mainly introduce EI for three main reasons: economic, moral and behavioral. Indirect employee participation and consultation makes use of employees’ potential benefits in the process of decision making. The major impediments to employee participation are attitudes of trade unions and management. EI is a participative process that makes use of the entire employee’s capacity. Legge (2004, pp 43) encourages org anizations to employ employee management because it increases employees’ commitment for the success of the business. In distinguishing EI from employee participation, Robins by observing that EI tends to be more encompassing as employees utilize all their capacity in the organizational success. This view is further supported by Wilkinson (1988, pp98) as he defines EI as the participative process that utilizes workers’ entire capacity, designed to encourage commitment among all employees. On the other hand, employee participation does not specifically seek that individual commitment degree and hence, it is only seen as a subset of employee involvement. For example, participation by employees can only be limited to their participation in the circles of quality and their outcomes. However, employee involvement links quality circles to organizational success and therefore is acts as a strategy to improve performance. Importance of Employee Involvement EI refers to the crea tion of an environment in which the employees have an impact on the actions and decisions that affect their work. EI is neither a tool nor a goal. As