INTRODUCTION

In pursuit of high performance by the employee to meet organizational objectives social scientists, psychologists and management thinkers have endeavoured to discover and implement the most appropriate ways. Motivational problems have come into even sharper prominence in recent years, as corporations of all sizes and in all fields face up to issues of heightened dynamic competition, ever-accelerating technological demands, and shortages of key technical and management skills, in a pervading climate of economic uncertainty and world recession. In order to survive, whole new activities have entered into the management lexicon as companies restructure, downsize, delayer, outplace and subcontract their satellite activities. Common to all formulations is, first, an understanding that people have the potential to provide competitive advantage and, second, that management styles should reflect the central importance of people as assets to be utilized in order to offer optimum benefit to the business. Employees must be drawn into the corporate culture and committed to its values and objectives; employees must be empowered to become self-managers rather than act as passive recipients to management plans must participate in decision making. the intention is to give employees a say in organizational affairs, the initiatives emerge from management and are linked, however tenuously, with the achievement of management objectives. We refer to this manifestation of employee influence enhancement as employee involvement. C Jeff Hyman and Rob Mason (1995, p. 5-6)

EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT

An environment is created due to employee involvement that leads to confusion on decision making and action side affecting their job. As practiced in many bodies of work employee involvement can never be an aim or a tool rather it is the philosophical thought of common men of managing and leading their work organization which results in betterment. A motivating and fetching environment is created which helps to keep back best employee with a feeling of own ness by involvement .When an organization truly wants to create a positive work environment that is based on high trust, exceptional customer service collaborative teamwork, operational excellence and creative problem solving, then the leadership team must begin to understand, invest in and be responsive to the needs of the group that represents the organization’s most valuable assets and is also one of its most important customers, the employees. On return of very nominal investment comes high level of employee motivation, new ideas, promises and production which leads to the betterment of the organization and brings about more profit . A fundamental total quality management percept is that employees must be involved and empowered.

Employee involvement refers to the importance of each and every employee who as a a fully mechanical unit employee do play a very important part for operation and maintain team leads to the progress of the organization. Each employee’s input is solicited and valued by, hisher management. Employees and management recognize that each employee is involved in running the business. One of the greatest underlying factors in the success or failure of any organization is the power of its people, and how well that power is focused towards meeting the organization’s objectives. For production Organizations tapping the power of men are more strong and competitive in comparison to those that do not. Companies thinking their employee as mere machines never realize their capabilities; such organization’s inefficiency attracts competition, until the philosophy of management changes.

Employee involvement leads to empowering of employees , who are able to take part in decision-making and thoughts of improvement at their respective levels in the company. Since Mc Gregor’s theory y first brought to managers, the idea of a participative management style, employee involvement has taken many forms, including the job design approaches and special activities such as quality of work life (QWL) programs. A great thinker from Technical University of Crete A. Apostolou, gives the view that only people of one company brings about the difference of it from the other. The Japanese have always recognized this and it is one of the reasons for their success in world markets —- they place tremendous value on the integration of people with organizational objectives, equipments and processes .The issue forced to be addressed by the employees are involvement, communication and development. The maturity of a company in the employment relationship is measured through the three issues. Many people confuse communication systems such as team briefings with involvement.

PRACTICES IN EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT

One of the most well-known and widely used recognition devices is the use of suggestion systems. Employees offer suggestions (or improving processes or cutting costs and are recognised with small cash awards. The Japanese have been especially effective at making suggestion systems work. For instance, a typical high-performing Japanese plant in the auto components business generates 47 suggestions per employee a year and pays approximately the equivlent of U.S. $35 per suggestion. In contrast, a comparable Western factory generates about one suggestion per employee per year. but pays out $90 per suggestion. In 1995 Toyota received 1,9 million suggestions from employees of which they implemented 95%. Stephen P. Robbins ( p. 153-154)

THE SCOPE OF PARTICIPATION

An alternative state response to the uncertainties associated with market fluctuations is to offer employees a measure of protection against the harshness of unfettered market forces by providing them which some say in events which could disrupt or otherwise effect their working lives. It could also argue that repercussions of market developments strengthen the case for employee protection. The rise in part time and in conventional employment patterns serves to increase the dependence of employees upon organizations whose prime motivation is to respond effectively to market signals. In order for a protectionist process to serve a useful function for its intended beneficiaries appropriate mechanisms are needed to inform employees of their representatives of high level company. Participations under their conditions is likely to involve representative employee member of high level decision making bodies which formally equips them with opportunities for more profound inputs than are found with the narrowly defined market adaptation processes associated with employee involvement .though participative approaches aim to provide employees with protection , in their non collective bargaining format they might also derive from a less adverbial industrial relations perspective than that which give rise to employer dominated involvement. Where the need for adequate systems of representations of collective interests is recognized and accepted as a valuable contributor to long term industrial harmony, participation might also form part of a system which positively encourages employers to plan for the future through investment in plant, technology and people and to include human resource development as part of long term planning and investment strategy. In these instances, whilst providing employees with a measure of security, participative arrangements would also conform with a pattern of industrial decision-making typified by reference to long term performance objectives.

EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT MODEL

For people and organizations who desire a model to apply , the best i have discovered was developed from work by Tannebaum and Schmidt(1958) and Sadler(1970).While decision making they provide a continuum for leadership and involvement which leads to increment of role for employees and decrease for supervisors. The continuum includes this progression.

Tell: the supervisor makes the decisions and announces it to staff. The supervisor provided complete directions.

Sell: the supervisor makes the decision and then attempts to gain commitment from staff by “selling” the positive aspects of the decision.

Consult: Though the final decision is given by the authority still supervisors are invited to put decision.

Join: the employees are invited to make decisions with the supervisors.

The keys to involvement are several & complex:

(a) Financial -> share ownership and profit distribution plans can help to foster an in terest in a company’s affair at the competition level which is often hard to get across in the normal day to day routine of workplace activity. According to an industrial society survey, one in six UK employees holds the share in their organization. .The managers who were skewed were those who held stocks [one -third of the manager]. Amongst unskilled manual worker this dropped to just 5%. Half of all share owners surveyed felt that owing shares had made them more committed to the company’s success although there was no significant difference on job satisfaction or their rating of their company overall as an employer. .An incentive is essential to increase its worker’s share to ownership if the company wishes to. One of the most common form of incentive is the use of employee share plans (ESOPs). These typically offer a one share purchase arrangement, with the company issuing matching shares from a share trust for every ordinary share purchased. Effectively a half- price buying arrangement but with the added bonus of tax savings.

(b) Job security: Doubts as to whether you will still be with the company next week are hardly likely to encourage a sense of belonging. The Japanese identified this as obvious truism for several years. There is some evidence that this approach is starting to impact on the organization of labor contracts in the west The deal of Rover in 1992 changed the 80 year old tradition in USA, production for employees by assuring job security and lay off guarantees. A no compulsory redundancy policy was put into strains during 1980s and 1990s.

The structure of the work organization itself determines many facets of the employment relationship; in particular, job design can influence the degree of control an employee has over his or her work and, with that, the degree of personal responsibility felt for the outcomes and quality of work. The system of multi shifts, in – line methods and absence coverage helps in personal accountability, the work remains done without any prior condition of absence of employees and work results always positive unlike professional jobs. Consequently employees constrained by systems feel little sense of ownership of the total process. The survey of companies focuses on cell – based production and group structure in working form, shows absenteeism, good quality of outcome and high production, which is brought about by greater sense of involvement and decision making responsibility. Digital Equipment for example use a derivative of autonomous work groups called “High Performance Work Design”. The company feels they have achieved better quality, higher output, lower inventory and faster and more accurate decision making. The changes are not just restricted to the high tech finish of production. EMCAR, a clothing manufacturer, changed from traditional production lines to “Autonomous Work Groups” (AWGs), with individual piecework being replaced by a group bonus. As a consequence labour turnover and absenteeism went down accordingly in industrial norms leading to increased production. The given turnaround times on orders came down from six – eight weeks to four weeks.

METHODOLOGYƒ  Employee participation and empowerment is a worldwide applicable technique. There have more options along with employee involvement. It brings together incentive programs, researches, focus and more. The aim is to identify the most efficient options of employee involvement that can be linked to the goals of an organization. In order to implement employee involvement and empowerment to an enterprise the following key actions need to take place:

• Giving employee the responsibility

• Training employee to accept responsibility

• Communicating and giving feedback

• Giving rewards and recognition

Workers today are more and more being asked by management to join employee involvement programs in order to improve the quality of their work lives. In order to survive today’s harsh and fierce fully competitive situations, the management realizes that only cooperation between the management and the workers can help tide over it. It very well understands that the days of forced labor management techniques are practices of the past and not realistic anymore.

It is in the best interest of both workers and supervisors to increase happiness and satisfaction on the job, because happy and satisfied employees are productive employees who insure the employer’s profit and continued existence of the company and the worker’s jobs. In such programs management usually wants:

1. Access to the workers’ knowledge of the job.

2. The Management looks forward to acceptance of newer technologies without

disapproval.

3. Freeness regarding work regulations, classification of works, assignment the contract for the cause of better efficiencies.

4. Contract differs and concessions of occasionally contract.

If the chance of employee involvement is true and valid, it must have the most important six conditions as follows:

1. Management involves the union at the highest levels as an equal partner from planning, through implementation, and evaluation of employee involvement. To coordinate and set up the employee involvement committee a consultant is hired by the joint decision of union and management..

2. It is a voluntary process for both union and company. The committee that deals with employee involvement is selected, elected by the union.

3. Collective bargaining and grievance matters are not a part of the program These matter stays out of employee involvement..

4. Management accepts the proposal in written form that no worker can be downgraded as consequences of ideas generated by the employee in employee involvement committee.

5The monetary savings of employee involvement are distributed among workers through returns of more money in cheque, upgrading, less working hour, etc. The management and the union converging state this. .

6. Management actions on cooperation should be the same as management words.

The management strives for a healthy relationship in its relationship with the union as it actively seeks to settle all differences at the lower level and tries to reason with the union against putting forward of cases for settlement as it leads to the depletion of the union treasury. The officers and the lower level members of the union are treated with the same respect by the management while at the same time seeing to it that the rights of all the members are duly obliged.

In the studies of Virginia P., the impact perception of leadership style is use of power and conflict management style on organizational outcomes. Richmond, John P. To measure the employee satisfaction using continuum [tell, consult, join] researchers Wagner and James McCroskuv developed an instrument.

Their research discovered that, “the supervisor who wishes to generate positive impact on satisfaction with supervision, satisfaction with work, and solidarity and to reduce communication anxiety should strive to get her/his subordinates to perceive her/him as using a more employee-centered (consult-join) leadership style.” At the same time, however, the supervisor cannot be seen by employees as abdicating responsibility for decision making.

Examples:

Tell: Good while communicating about government rules, safety norms, decisions that are not required for employee input.

Sell: Decision remains safe from employee influence, useful. Where commitment is required

Consult: Information to employee result successful consultation and end to discussion, where input is required but the supervisor holds the power of decision finalizing.

Join: When the supervisor truly builds consensus around a decision and is willing to keep influence equal to that of the others providing input is called the key to a successful join.

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Advantages

Employees have knowledge about their customers and the company they work for.

Employees are close to the business of purchase and sale.

Employees have less knowledge regarding the supply needs and frequency than the employee

Employees have prior knowledge about its weak and strong points in the team.

Employees know about the logos and displays at the basic level.

Disadvantages:

Employees are devoid of knowledge what it needs to run a company.

Employees may come up with grudges against the company or amongst themselves.

Sometimes employees may not be dedicated in giving their best for the organizations.

The overall success of the company depends on some investment of the employee

Employees can present false interest.

Employees may have conflicting interests

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EXAMPLE:

Initiating and Sustaining Employee Involvement at Lyondell

Lyondell Petrochemical Company is engaged in the production of a huge variety of petrochemicals, including olefins, methanol, polyethylene and polypropylene. It is also engaged in the production of refined petroleum though through an affiliate.

More than fifteen hundred workers work at four different production sites in Texas. Its headquarters is in Houston in 1980s; Bob Gover was on a group which suggested convergence of petrochemical and refinement of the company, to stop loss of money and formation of new companies. Atlantic Richfield called the company Lyondell Petrochemical and asked Gower to run it. Choosing to regard as with improvement in production, a challenge an organization that had lost a total of $200 million each year for the past three years, Gower accepted Gower had many problems other than serious red ink .Due to lack of any assets the company could not stand apart in competition .It did not enjoy any extra credit in the market or neither have any special technology .The only way to differentiate itself and bring back profitability. But, as Gower notes, “Morale was low and costs were way too high”. Matters became more badly when Lyondell made a new management team. “I was told that I could talk into joining me.” No doubt Atlantic Richfield’s leaders felt pretty safe with such a generous offer, but they did not count on Gower’s persuasive powers. He not only pulled together a management team, “but the people who came where risk takers who believed, as I did, that people are the key to a successful turnaround”. And Lyondell has succeeded. In 1989 Lyondell was ranked first by Fortune, for sales per employee under all the best industrial companies in the USA. . It earned the same honor again in 1990 and1991.Baldrige was visited in 1991 and 1992. Employee involvement leads Lyondell to his success. A change in management’s attitude brings about the initiation of employee involvement. To save Lyondell from loss of money his leaders turned to employee involvement, as they believed people have good ideas to share and are responsible, are proud of their work, etc. want responsibility.

GROWTH OF EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT

There is a growing body of evidence that, in aggregate, usage of the involvement techniques outlined above has increased throughout , mainly Europe (bean 1994:183), the united states (eg- Deutsch and Schurman 1993) and, we shall now show, especially in the UK. Since the 1960s in Japan, there has developed a range of quality based involvement technique and informal communicative practices, which have also helped to influence practice in America and the UK (Oliver and Wilkinson 1992: chap-2). The Workplace Industrial Relations Surveys-WIRS, conducted in 1980, 1984 and most recently in 1990, provide a comprehensive view of development in workplace industrial relations in Britain. The research gives the view that in the early 1980s, managers reported a higher increase in the introduction of all types of employee involvement between 1980 and 1984 than in the three years prior to 1980. Overall, the proportion of managers reporting ‘any initiative to increase involvement’ rose from 24% to 35% with specific emphasis given to ‘Two -Way Communication Systems’, a trend confirmed by worker representatives in the research. This current research gave focus on some qualitative changes in involvement practice in that the incidence of collective- oriented consultation.

THE RATIONALE FOR EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION:

Employee participation, conversely, emerges from a collective employee interest to optimize the physical, security and inspirational conditions under which employees a re-contracted to serve . These ambitions are likely to be supported and promoted by political ideas, systems and parties, sensitive to the potential deprivations which accompany unregulated market operations, but resisted by employers whose freedom of action may be curtailed by protective participation procedure. An example of employer prejudice to employee participation proposals is well demonstrated by the UK experience. Tensions between the contrasting interests of employers and labor became evident in the UK, during the late 1970s: during this period, political expediency to mobilize union support was articulated by a strong union impetus toward participative arrangement, which were capable of propelling employee interests beyond the areas bounded by collective bargaining alone. Together, these movements manifested in proposals for worker and representative councils. The most inspiring of these initiatives was without any doubt the attempt to introduce a participative framework based on worker directors using the theory of unitary board, composed of equal numbers of shareholder and union workers supplemented by a minority of Neutral Director.

Thus both employee involvement and participation are interrelated and is essential in society as said above. Though both have its own qualities, boon and bane, it is essential for balancing work environment and the working culture. Involvement and participation makes work more responsible and results are their best as all hold their own pride for their part of work done under a team.

Work Citations