Impacts of Employees Participation and Involvement on Productivity (Essay Sample)

IMPACTS OF EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION AND INVOLVEMENT ON PRODUCTIVITY
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Introduction
The concept of employees’ involvement and participation has over the years seen a growing interest from human resource management and also different scholars. Most of the organizations are today faced with the challenges of empowering and managing their employees to ensure active participation in decision making (Cox, Zagelmeyer, & Marchington, 2006).
Employee participation is defined as the process through which managers involve their subordinates in decision making rather than simply acting on given orders. Employee involvement, on the other hand, is defined as the process that is usually initiated by managers of an organization with the aim of increasing the information given to the employees to enhance their commitment to the business and organizational objectives (Adams, 1991).
Employees can be involved in the various aspects of the organization which may include making decisions on how work is done, making suggestions for improvement, goal setting, planning and monitoring of their performance. Participation and involvement of the employee is part of a process of empowerment in the work place.
According to McGregor theory Y if managers want to achieve organization's objectives they must treat employees as mature and responsible individuals and must adopt a participatory and democratic leadership style (Gannon & Boguszak, 2013). This paper aims to summarize many theories of how involvement and participation of employee can raise satisfaction, product quality, and productivity and also stressing the reasons why employee involvement and participation may not always work.
Employees’ participation and involvement.
The process of employees’ participation and involvement is usually instigated by the management and it is assumed that employees want greater involvement regardless of the form it may take. The participation mechanism adopted by organizations largely depends on a variety of factors such as the political environment within which the organization operates, organizational structure, management leadership style and reward scheme. Employees can either be directly or indirectly involved through their representatives.
It is therefore expected that a greater sense of commitment and productivity will result from participation and involvement of employees. Employees’ participation and involvement is known to have various benefits which increase organizational productivity. In an organization where managers often involve and allow employees to participate in decision-making, productivity has increased significantly due to increased morale as employees feel a sense of belonging and desire to achieve organizational goals (Butler & Glover, 2006).
Employees’ participation and involvement has the following advantages which are likely to result in increased productivity in an organization;
1. Increases employees morale through goal setting since goal setting is usually an effective motivational technique thus resulting in increased productivity.
2. Provide employees with an opportunity to use their intellectual which often lead to better decision making in an organization since employees in some circumstances may have information that managers may lack.
3. Employees feel more comfortable implementing decisions and ideas they were involved in making. This often reduces any form of resistance which would result in reduced productivity.
4. It does improve co-operation and communication flow in an organization. An effective communication system reduces time wastage thus the organization is likely to be more effective and hence increased productivity.
5. Participation process does satisfy nonpecuniary needs such as creativity, desire for respect and achievement resulting in increased motivation and organizational productivity.
6. Participation does increase the sense of loyalty and identification with the organization and where involvement and rewards take place in a group setup, the group is likely to pressurize individual employees to conform to decisions which would lead to increased efficiency and productivity.
7. Employees’ participation and involvement contribute to trust and sense of control which usually enhances employees’ dignity and sense of power, thus reducing the need to show power by restricting production and fighting the management.
8. Employees’ involvement helps minimize divergent views thus reducing possible conflicts in an organization. Organizational conflicts often result to low productivity; managers should, therefore, establish a mechanism that reduces such conflicts and employee participation in decision-making has often been successful in minimizing organizational conflicts and thus ensuring an organization is more productive.
For the organizations to enjoy the benefits of employees participation and involvement management, need to consider participation and involvement of employees as an investment. Research has shown that organization productivity has increased with increased level of employees’ involvement and participation (Markey & Townsend, 2013). Productivity is a performance measure which encompasses both effectiveness and efficiency; effective and high performing organization poses a culture that encourages employee participation and involvement in the various aspects of the organization. Employees are thus more willing to be involved in goal setting, decision-making and problem-solving activities which result in high performance (Markey,& Townsend,2013).
Where managers encourage participation and involvement job satisfaction increases among employees even with low compensation rates and thus employees, tend to be more productive. The majority of organizations today have resulted in increased employee participation with the aim of increasing their competitive advantage. Employee involvement has often been associated with improved quality and increased productivity thus resulting in more competitive organizations.
According to Kruse (2004) organization that often lack a proper involvement mechanism face a shortage of staff and employees absenteeism is usually very high. Research conducted by Ackers, Wilkinson & Dundon (2006) did show that organizations, where employee are not involved in decision making, have little job satisfaction, and their productivity is usually low. These employees are usually poorly motivated and often quit their job to look for jobs in those organizations where employee are involved in decisions.
According to Robinson (2004), employee participation does encourage the modern style of participatory management which increases job satisfaction and productivity among employees, thus resulting in overall organization productivity.
On the other hand, however, employee participation and involvement in decision-making, goal setting and planning have been criticized due to the disadvantages associated with the approach which often lead to reduced productivity. These disadvantages include;
1 The employee is once involved in a decision they usually become committed to it and, therefore, may be reluctant to change it even where there is a need for changing the decision.
2 Employees in some instances are likely to be less informed than managers, and this may contribute to inefficient decisions being made especially where they are involved in making such a decision.
3 Employees’ participation is time-consuming and especially where decisions are made by the group, this may impact negatively on the organizational efficiency thus affecting its overall productivity. This is also likely to contribute to decisions becoming in-adaptive to the changing environment, thus reducing productivity.
4 In certain circumstances, managers may fail to involve employees due to the complexity of the situation or other factors. In such instances productivity may reduce since once the culture of participation is established it would be difficult to withdraw it since employees consider it as their right.
5 It encourages cohesive participative groups to unite against management in preventing change and restricting production.
6 Often employees are likely to set very low goals for themselves resulting in low production.
According to McGregor’s Theory X, human beings are naturally lazy and dislike work. Employees are therefore not likely to seek greater responsibilities and managers should, therefore, adopt an authoritative approach to ensure employees productivity. In this regard, it would, therefore, mean that if managers were to adopt a more democratic approach to managing organizations, organization productivity would reduce significantly (Gannon,& Boguszak, 2013).
Research has also shown that in situations where the employees have been involved in decision-making organization productivity has not been optimum since employees usually set standards that are low to ensure they achieve them, which has significantly reduced the overall productivity of the organization (Phipps, Prieto, & Ndinguri, 2013). It is also argued that positive effect of employees’ participation will diminish with time and, in the long run, employees’ participation will not be able to yield a lot of benefit to the organization thus resulting in reduced productivity (Pereira & Osburn, 2007).
The employees expertise and level of knowledge do also determine whether the employee participation will lead to a positive impact, thus where employees expertise is low the organization will have to incur huge training costs. Critics have argued that such costs could be used by the organization to invest in t...