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.

Participation does not imply a common interest. It is an employee (or trade union, or sometimes government) led agenda relating to workers having a ‘collective voice’ in decision making.

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)

information

communication

consultation

co-determination

control

Worker Participation

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

• Promotion of participation

• The purpose of participation

o workers’ control

Worker ParticipationPA

RTIC

IPAT

ION

High

Low

Joint regulation of decisions

Managementunilateralismin decisionmaking

Joint consultationover decisionsalready made orwhich minimiseparticipation

Receipt ofinformation

Jointconsultationprior todecision making

Managers encourage cooperationbut retain power over decisions

Managers share powerover 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 involvemento 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

‘Cycles’ (Ramsay, 1977) or ‘Waves’ (Marchington et al. 1993) of interest

‘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

Management’s 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)

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002

JCC

Team briefings

Shareownership

Problem solvinggroups

Impact of EI

Workers

Managers and supervisors

Trade unions

Organisational performance and innovation

Contested meanings

Education Indoctrination

Liberating Controlling

De-layering Intensification

Team work Peer group pressure

Responsibility Surveillance

CommitmentCompliance

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?