INFLUENCE OF EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT ON ORGANIZATIONAL GROWTH

Employee involvement is crucial for an organization’s growth & development. It is all about developing an environment where employees have an influence on decisions and operations that relate to their jobs. It is a management process concerned about how employees can be empowered to contribute to continuous improvement and the growing success of their work organization.

Levels of employee involvement vary from organization-to-organization. There can be high involvement where employees have complete decision-making power e.g.-Self-Directed Work Teams, medium Involvement where employees offer recommendations, low Involvement employees give information, but are not aware of the problem. Employee involvement in any form is required for an organization’s development & growth as it:

• Leads to better definition of problems
• Improves number and quality of solutions
• More likely to select the best option

There can be a no. of ways for employee involvement such as:

• Suggestion Schemes: These schemes enable the employees at the lower levels or middle levels to communicate with the top level management. The employees are encouraged to provide suggestions to improve the work or the work environment, invites all types of suggestions/ideas, which will benefit the organization and its employees.

• Self directed teams: These teams have access to information that helps them to plan, control and improve their operations & thus are capable of taking corrective actions to resolve day-to-day problems. These work teams manage themselves. They completely undertake the management of that work — tasks formerly performed by supervisors and managers. This allows managers to teach, prepare and facilitate rather than simply direct and control.

• Total Quality Management: TQM is concerned with intense and regular scrutiny of each & every process or activity for ways to improve it. It is participative because this activity involves every employee in the organization; making each of them responsible for improving processes every day.

• Job Enlargement and Job Enrichment: Job enlargement means expanding the job content, adding tasks of similar competence & responsibility so as to minimize the boredom whereas job enrichment is concerned with providing challenging tasks to the employees. Both of these activities offer freedom and scope to the employees to use their judgment.

A no. of other employee involvement activities can be carried out by an organization for employee involvement. Such initiatives encourage employees to perform more effectively, boost their morale & contribute to organizational growth.

Contributed by:
Bosky Khullar
HR & PR Executive