Employee Voice

Overview

Employee Voice:

1. Worker Participation

2. Employee Involvement

Learning Objectives

Gain an insight into employee voice mechanisms Define and differentiate between participation and involvement Examine forms of participation and involvement Consider the potential consequences of increased involvement and

participation

What do we mean by employee participation and involvement?

Participation and involvement are often used in an imprecise

way

Involvement is an employer-led agenda and is concerned with

encouraging workers to identify with, and work towards, business goals. It implies a common interest. employee (or trade union, or sometimes government) led agenda relating to workers having a collective voice in decision making.

Participation does not imply a common interest. It is an

Employee voice can take many forms and can be weak or strong Following Marchington and Wilkinson (2005), we can conceive

of an escalator of employee involvement and participation

The escalator of participation (adapted from Marchington and Wilkinson 2000: 343)

control

co-determination consultation
communication information

Worker Participation

Participation as the distribution and exercise of power between workers and managers

Promotion of participation
The purpose of participation
o workers control

High

Worker Participation

Low

PARTICIPATION Management unilateralism in decision making

Receipt of information

Joint consultation over decisions already made or which minimise participation

Joint Joint regulation consultation of decisions prior to decision making

Managers share power over decisions

Managers encourage cooperation but retain power over decisions

Participation in the UK: Ongoing decline

Reasons for low participation

Many decisions made at a high level UK management hostility

right to manage

Participation and the business cycle

participation high during labour shortages etc

neutralise opposition

Employee Involvement (EI)

Increased interest in this area
Promotion of employee involvement
Generally initiated by employers/management on a voluntary

basis

The purpose of involvement

unitarist and business-centred often limited to information provision communicative involvement
o

e.g., suggestion boxes

Management Objectives for EI

Informing and educating workers about the organisation Engendering worker commitment and higher levels of job

satisfaction
Reducing labour turnover and absence levels Getting ideas from workers about how to improve work processes

Gaining co-operation for change

Complying with external regulations

Characteristics of EI

Degree; the escalator of EI Level; workplace to corporate headquarters Scope of subject matter; trivia to strategy Form; direct, indirect, financial

Direct EI

Direct EI involves a direct relationship between managers

and employees.
Forms of Direct EI: Downward communications and Upward

problem-solving:

Downward communication in practice

Downward communication: team briefing, employee reports,

videos, newsletters, emails, facebook, twitter

Managers tend to prefer oral rather than written forms of

communication
However, managers may be concerned that disclosing information

will undermine their own position

Team briefings are often dispensed with because of the pressure of

work
Unions are sometimes concerned about downward communication

because management is bypassing union representatives

Upward problem solving

Quality circles, task forces, suggestion schemes and

attitude surveys

The objective is to increase cooperation and the stock of

ideas available to companies

Work Redesign

Task-based participation: job rotation, job enlargement and

job enrichment

Team-working: on-line teams, multi-task teams and self-

managed teams

Indirect and Financial EI

Indirect EI involves management and employee

representatives (dealt with in earlier lectures). Joint consultation, works councils and worker directors (collective bargaining?)
Financial involvement - an element of reward is linked to the

performance of the company or establishment. Profit-related pay schemes, profit sharing and employee share ownership (worker co-operatives?)

Embedding EI at the Workplace

Presence or absence of specific EI practices
Breadth of coverage of EI: number of different forms Depth of coverage of EI: degree to which consolidated at

workplace

Bundles of supportive EI practices or contradictory

tendencies of interest

Cycles (Ramsay, 1977) or Waves (Marchington et al. 1993)

Cycles of Interest

Ramsay (1977) argued that interest in EI/EP was cyclical

and represented a response to challenges from organised labour

He rejected the then popular view that EI/EP initiatives

reflected the gradual humanisation of capitalism

Instead, EI/EP was viewed as a means of incorporating

workers and worker representatives

Interest would wane once the threat to managerial

authority had been dissipated

Waves of interest
The cycles theory was criticised by Ackers et al. (1992)

They argued that the theory could not account for employers

enthusiasm for EI in the 1980s and 1990s, when organised labour was relatively weak
Managements interest in participation can be stimulated by

phenomena other than the strength of organised labour (e.g. concern with customer care, concern with quality of processes, products and services)
Ackers et al. argued that it is better to think of interest as occurring

in waves within individual organisations.

Movements of EI schemes within an organisation over time (adapted from Marchington et al. 2003)
Team briefings
JCC Problem solving groups

Share ownership
1994 1996 1998 2000 2002

Impact of EI

Workers Managers and supervisors Trade unions Organisational performance and innovation

Contested meanings
Education Liberating De-layering Team work Responsibility

Indoctrination Controlling Intensification Peer group pressure Surveillance

Commitment

Compliance

Impact of EI on Organisations

Increases in worker commitment, satisfaction and fair

treatment
Improvements in behavioural indicators such as turnover and

absence
Enhancing levels of quality, productivity and customer

service
Adding value to profitability, corporate reputation and long-

term performance

Management support for EI

EI schemes may fail because of lack of support from line

management
Even if senior managers are committed, this may not be true of

more junior and line managers

Supervisors may react negatively to initiatives that have been

taken without consulting them

They may find themselves too overworked to ensure that EI

initiatives operate effectively

They may not be sufficiently trained to ensure the initiative

works

Strategic Questions
How far should employees be involved in decision making? Should employee involvement be direct or through representation? What form should the involvement take? At what organisational level should involvement take place? What issues should be subject to involvement?