Communication and Involvement

Employee relations are part of the Human Resources management, which also link in with the role, and purpose of HRM, the Recruitment and selection, Equal opportunities and managing diversity, training and development and employee rewards.

According to (Bratton & Gold, 2007) Employee relations refers to ‘an assortment of employer initiatives for improving workplace communications, for engaging employees either directly or indirectly in decision making and for securing employee compliance with management rules through disciplinary action’.

The differences between employee participation and employee involvement are the following:

Employee participation is part of a process of empowerment in the workplace it involves decentralising power within the organisation. Team working is a key part where team members are encouraged to make decisions for themselves with guidelines and support.

Employee participation is to help with quality movement and to make a move towards human resources development therefore employers are trusted to make decisions for the organisation and for them selves.

An examples of employee participation include project teams in which employees work on projects or tasks where responsibility being delegated to the team. Suggestion schemes - where employees can suggest new ideas to managers within the organisation.

Employee involvement is creating an environment in which people have an impact on decisions and actions that affect their jobs. It is a management and leadership philosophy about how people are most enabled to contribute to continuous improvement and the ongoing success of their work organisation.

Best way to describe Employee involvement is by using Tannenbaum and Schmidt (1958) and Sadler (1970) model that provides and shows the leadership roles and how it should be done and below is the model created by Tannenbaum and Schmidt this has been taken from the website below:

http://www.lindsay-sherwin.co.uk/guide_team_leadership/html_leadership_styles/4_tannenbaum_schmidt.htm

Tell: the supervisor makes the decision and announces it to staff. The supervisor provides complete direction.

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

Consult: the supervisor invites input into a decision while retaining authority to make the final decision herself.

Join: the supervisor invites employees to make the decision with the supervisor. The supervisor considers her voice equal in the decision process.

To round out the model, I add the following.

Delegate: the supervisor turns the decision over to another party.

Ways in which organisation can involve employees in decision making is by offering them training course where they can they do off the job training and learn and experiences new ways, Team working exercises to help them, putting them in that situation and see how well they handle it.

As we know organisations have now started using social networking sites as a means of involving their staff, both for existing staff and potential recruits,

Such as networks like these:

Facebook, Network, Twitter, Social Networking MySpace, Flickr and Blogging.

I strongly feel that is true because Facebook is currently the most well used social networking organisation where business are expanding there business by making fan pages and then sending them around so people join them and this is an ongoing successful net work. The reason why I feel these networks are very successful is because it open to a wide range of audiences and is likely to get to the target market you want, it is cheap as there are no costs at in when advertising in these networks as you just have to sign up , they are all very common and used throughout all organisation for example on Facebook there is a group for Newlook which is a normal retail shop in the highstreet and as you can on Facebook there are over 9,841 People who are a fan and have Liked this and a link is provided which take you straight to the Newlook main home page, and as you can see this is very effective and this is how companys are expanding there ways and reaching new audiences.

Conclusion

I have come to a conclusion that communication and involvement has improved a lot since the new technology and social networking have been introduced, I also strongly feel that business have used this to their best advantage and are used at all age groups, social networking have been banned in some organisation as they have taken up too much time and are highly additive.

Reference:

Lecture Notes Week 25

http://www.lindsay-sherwin.co.uk/guide_team_leadership/html_leadership_styles/4_tannenbaum_schmidt.htm

The CIPD has a useful Fact Sheet on employee communications

www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/empreltns/comconslt/empcomm.html

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Newlook/26498945714?v=info&ref=search#!/pages/Newlook/26498945714?v=info&ref=mf#info_edit_sections