Employee Involvement and Comunication

Employee participation is when an organisation involves employees in decision making processes. employee participation can by represented by a committee or be direct. Direct forms of employee participation can take place through surveys, team briefings, quality circles, idea suggestion schemes and so on. This is more of a pluralist view. (dictionary.bnet [2010]).

Employee involvement however is when you physically involve your employees in making the decision making process, and let every one have their say about any changes in organisation. By allowing employees to take part in decision making plans and process; it will increase loyalty, motivation and employees will take more responsibility towards the improvement of an organisation. Involving employees in decision making is more of a unitarist view. (humanresources.baout [2010]).
An organisation can imvolve their employees, by allowing them to participate finacially, for example allow them to buy shares in the company, calling employees to decision making meetings and plannings, consult their oppinnion and try and put them into prctice and so on.

Nowdays a new inovative ways to involve employees are social networking sites where employees could talk about their views on companies and even get involved decision making schemes. Companies would hire IT experts to run those social network site, whre one person will take into consideration everybodys ideas and reply to them on their views. These sites ar also used to recruit future employees, there would be a page where people who want to apply for that job are able to access someone who will clear all their queries. One last thing that social sites ae used for, eventhough companies don't admit it, it's to monitor employees and see what they do outside their workplace, and some even get caught on doing things that they shouldn't be doing. Employers can personally view the character of an employee through social networking sites. The main social networking sites that are used are facebook, Twitter, and after that the ones that are not commonly used are bebo and my space. On facebook i found a recruiting page for M&S where all the questions of potential future recruits were cleared, however i also found one for employees, however that one was blocked and only members of the organisation can access it. Having pages on social sites is a really great advantage for organisations as they can monitor employees as well as recruit people and monitor the numbers.

Conclusion:

In conclusion i believe that involving employees is more effective than making them participate, as it will increase loyalty motivation and also contribute towards retaing good employees.
References:

• (dictionary.bnet [2010] Employee participation [online] available at: http://dictionary.bnet.com/definition/employee+participation.html [accessed: 03/05/2010])
• (humanresources.about [2010] Employee involment [online] available at: http://humanresources.about.com/od/glossarye/a/employee_inv.htm [accessed:03/05/2010])