Abstract
In the 21st century there is an increasing organizational methodology on the rights of the employees at work. Such methodology is debated in this essay, presenting the employee involvement, empowerment, engagement and industrial democracy as the main forms of representing the employees’ interests. While all these working processes are primarily focused towards contributing to the organizational performance, they are also directly or indirectly targeting the representation of the employees’ interests. There are formal and informal processes for pursuing the rights and interests of the employees by engaging them in the decision making processes, through direct and indirect practices. These processes are usual practices of the everyday working environment, applied mostly as tactics to increase the organizational wealth, through involving, engaging or empowering the workers on contributing with new ideas to generate increased productivity. The essay provides consistent literature on the working processes through employees contribute to improving their work and indicates the most likely forms of representing the employees’ interests.
Key words: employee involvement, empowerment, engagement and industrial democracy.
Employee Related Processes for Representing the Interests of Employees
With the rise of human rights, the democratization of developed and developing countries and the increased number of unions protecting the workers’ rights in the 21st century, the working environment has become characterized by forms of employee involvement, empowerment, engagement and industrial democracy (Pierce, 2011). In the nowadays organizations the employees enjoy specific rights and liberties, which allow them to participate in the decision makings within their workplace, having the power of influencing their companies’ future (Tonnesen, 2013). There are various manifestations of the employees’ rights and responsibilities towards their companies’ future, such as the employee involvement, employee empowerment, employee engagement and industrial democracy, but one of them better represents the interests of the employees than the others.
Employee involvement is “an umbrella term that is inconsistently and imprecisely used to embrace a diverse range of management processes involving participation, communication, decision making, industrial democracy and employee motivation” (Price, 2011, p. 252). Therefore, the employee involvement process implies motivating the employees by offering them the opportunity to participate in the business development, but it also allows them the opportunity to be closer to the management and have their ideas and work rewarded (Tonnesen, 2013; Cohen, 2011). The concept of employee involvement is correlated with their voluntary participation in providing new ideas for their organizations, which speeds up the entrepreneurial endeavors and maintains the work environment open to creative ideas and initiative (Cohen, 2011).
The first sign of employee empowerment is the constant and transparent communication between manager and employees, for sharing sensitive information and reports about the financial performances, stock data, etc., which may allow the employees to further suggest how they can contribute with their work to their companies growth (Emerson, 2012). In theory, a facet of the employee empowerment is that it fulfills the role of generating employee satisfaction, as it allows workers to make decisions related to their work and to freely express themselves (Elnaga and Imran, 2014). In practice, employee empowerment is considered a myth, as employees are solely encouraged to perform higher for substantiating their organizations’ performances, while in reality they are not entitled to the decision – making power (Elnaga and Imran, 2014). Emerson (2012) indicates the contrary, stating that managers do practice employee empowerment, up to the point that they leave the entire responsibility for the organizational performances on the employees’ decision-makings. The employee empowerment is mostly associated with employee satisfaction and organizational performances generated due to increased employee self – confidence (Emerson, 2012).
On the other hand, the employee engagement process is meant to determine workers to have a positive feeling about their work place, their jobs and responsibilities, which is achieved through motivation (Price, 2011). The employee engagement is pursued as a strategy for improving the working life of the employees, providing them a comfortable working environment, with stimulating roles, with the purpose of increasing the employees’ performances, considering the fact that happy employees are productive employees (Purcell, 2012). The employee engagement is identified through engagement feelings (when employees manifest enthusiasm for their work) and engagement behavior (when employees demonstrate proactivity) (Price, 2011). Through the process of employee engagement, employees are the focus of organizations and placed in a position of judging the fairness of their managers, which can result either in enthusiasm and proactivity, or lack of these engagement identifiers, if employees are disengaged (Purcell, 2012).
The industrial democracy refers to a formal manifestation of the employee representation within the companies in which they work, which implies that employees group in legal entities, such as groups, councils or boards for influencing the decision – making process within organizations (Hegar, 2012). Similar with the employees involvement process, the industrial democracy is a formal and recognized approach through which employees express their feelings and ideas about how they consider that they should perform their work. Tonnessen (2014) observes that this process provides employees more opportunities to communicate with the management and participate in the decision making throughout the organizational levels. With the prescriptions of industrial democracy, employees are entitled to making decisions that may affect their work and the entire organizational performances, which indicates that they are accountable and responsible for their decisions (Hegar, 2012).
All the processed of interacting with the employees are forms of organizational communication and manifests of an increased consideration towards the employees, as the driving force of organizational performances. However, while all the discussed processes involving the employees are targeted towards achieving organizational performances, some of them are more focused towards representing the employees’ interests. The employee involvement, engagement and empowerment are informal processes of allowing the workers to interact with management and the organizational decision makings. Out of these, the employee engagement mostly pursues the employees’ interests, as the organization needs to deliver the organizational environment required for engaging the workers into showing enthusiasm and demonstrating proactivity. The employees will only respond to their work requirements if their needs are met and if they are motivated, through engagement practices. While employee involvement and empowerment are informal practices of allowing the employees to participate in decision making processes, they also focus on determining employees to focus on deciding how to improve their work, for the end purpose of improving the organizational performance. On the other hand, the industrial democracy process is a formal and recognized process through which employees decide what is best for themselves, hence pursuing the workers’ interests. The industrial democracy, followed by the employees engagement are the most likely forms of representing the interests of employees, for the reasons described above.
Bibliography
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Elnaga, A.A. & Imran, A. (2014) “The impact of employee empowerment on job satisfaction” American Journal of Research Communication. Vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 13 – 26.
Emerson, A.L. (2012) The benefit of employee empowerment. CreditUnionTimes [online] Available from < http://www.cutimes.com/2012/02/15/the-benefits-of-employee-empowerment?page=2 > [Accessed 23 July 2015].
Hegar, K. 2012. Modern human relations at work. Mason: Cengage Learning.
Price, A. 2011. Human resource management. Mason: Cengage Learning.
Purcell, J. (2012) The limits and possibilities of employee engagement. Warwick: University of Warwick.
Tonnessen, Tor. 2014. Managing process innovation through exploitation and exploitation. Springer Gabler.
