4 Employee

Involvement
Chapter Objectives
• Understanding motivation
• Empowering employees
– Assessing current levels through surveys
– Basics of Empowerment
• Understanding functioning and effectiveness of teams
• Encouraging employee participation though
suggestion systems
• Understanding the concept of Gain sharing
• Brief overview of performance appraisals
• Overview of unions and employee involvement
Motivation
Knowledge of motivation helps in understanding
utilization of employee involvement to achieve process
improvement. Some important concept in motivation
are:
– Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
– Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory
– Employee wants
– Employee Empowerment
– Steps Towards Achieving Motivated Work Force
Employee Empowerment
• It is essential for the management to assess the
current level of employee empowerment. Employee
Surveys help in assessing employee relations,
identification of trends in improvement and increase
in communication effectiveness
• Empowerment should not be confused with
delegation or job enrichment. Empowerment is an
environment in which people have the ability, the
confidence and responsibility and ownership towards
achieving organizational values and goals
Teams
Employee involvement is optimized by the use of Teams
Understanding Teams:
• Depending on the management, the names of teams may differ but
there are mainly 4 Types of Teams:
– Process improvement team
– Cross-functional team.
– Natural work teams
– Self-directed/self-managed work teams
• In order to be effective, teams should have certain Characteristics:
– Sponsor, Team Charter and Team Composition
– Ground rules and clear objectives
– Accountability, trust and open communication
– Well defined decision making process
– Resources
– Effective problem solving
– Appropriate leadership
– Balanced participation
– Cohesiveness
Teams (Continued)
• Team Member Roles: A team will consist of a team leader, facilitator, recorder, timekeeper, and
members. All team members have clearly defined roles and responsibilities.
• Decision Making Methods: Five types of decisions, as well as no decision, occur during the team
process.
– Non-decision
– Unilateral decision
– Handclasp decision
– Minority-rule decision
– Majority-rule decision
• Effective Team Meetings: If the participants know their roles and utilize the characteristics of
successful teams, the probability of effective team meetings is enhanced.
• Organization should understand and recognize following stages of Teams
– Forming
– Storming
– Norming
– Performing
– Adjourning
• Teams demonstrate typical Behavioral Problems and their solutions are founded by structured
methods
• Management should be aware of the common barriers to team progress. With a knowledge of these
barriers, management can evaluate their own performance and take the necessary corrective action
to support team progress.
• Training essential for an effective team. The quality council must take an active role in establishing
training programs.
Enhancing Employee Motivation
• Suggestion Schemes
Suggestion Schemes are designed to encourage individuals to be
involved by contributing to the organization. Suggestions schemes
often work in parallel to the Team Approach
• Recognition and Reward
Recognition is a form of employee motivation in which the
organization publically acknowledges positive contributions of
individuals or teams
• Gain sharing
Gain sharing is a financial reward and recognition scheme that results
from improved organizational performance
• Performance Appraisal
The purpose of performance appraisal is to assess and let employees
know how they are doing and provide a basis for promotions, salary
increases, counseling and other purposes related to employee’s future
Unions and Employee Involvement
Unions often support Quality Improvement Programs.
Unions express concerns when management exercises
too much control over employees. It is essential that
Union and management work with mutual trust.
Involving employees, empowering them and bringing
them into the decision making process provides
opportunity for continuous process improvement.
Summary
• Employee Involvement is an important approach to improve quality and productivity.
Involvement of employees is a crucial factor in achieving higher quality collective
business growth.
• Mature organizations should demonstrate increasing participation of employees at
various levels of business operations.
• There are several levels of motivation and its knowledge helps the organization
understand its workforce.
• Management should create an environment of trust among the employees and nurture
the ability of their workforce, their confidence and ownership of their processes.
Employee involvement is also optimized by the use of teams.
• Organization must also encourage individual efforts and ideas. Suggestion and schemes
provide an individual with an opportunity to get involved by contributing to the
organization.
• Recognition of efforts should be done publicly acknowledging the positive contributions
of an individual or a team.
• Gain sharing is a financial reward and recognition system that results from improved
organizational performance. It is a measurement of an organization’s productivity and a
method to share the productivity gains.
• Performance appraisals of the individuals or teams should be done to let the employees
know that their performance is evaluated and should provide basis for promotions,
counseling and several other purposes.