Mercado meta

Employee involvement grew during the final quarter of the twentieth century and is generally characterised by four things:

Form of communication Purpose Methods

Downward communication from employer to employee

To create educated staff and to enable them to engage in problem solving

Team briefing Internet / Intranet / Corporate email

Informal communication Written media- report, journal, newsletter Video

Upward problem-solving To widen the pool of knowledge used to solve problems. Knowledge

management is a fuller blown version of this

Quality circle Action team

Suggestion scheme Attitude survey

Task participation and team working

To devolve responsibility for problem-identification and problem-solving

Team working

Autonomous working group

Financial involvement To give employees a stake in the success of the

organisation through

Profit sharing Share ownership Bonus scheme

More recently the concept of the 'employee voice' has become fashionable. HR

professionals are often the driver for this and the variety of channels through with this voice may be heard is large. The idea recognises the value of employees' contributions across a range of issues and in Europe the concept has been enshrined in the somewhat prescriptive legislation requiring organisations to set up Works Councils if they do not already have them.

E. HOW DO WE INCREASE DISCRETIONARY

BEHAVIOUR?

Alongside employee involvement in decision making organisations have moved from employee compliance (do as we say or we will punish you; keep out of trouble and you can have a job for life) to employee commitment (you are expected to show commitment to this organisation and to be creative in solving problems).

Discretionary behaviour is voluntary performance over and above the minimum required. It is this that promotes excellence (as opposed to mediocrity) and this is a critical ingredient in organisational success.

It is usually expressed as:

Discretionary behaviour = Ability x Motivation x Opportunity = AMO

Guest suggests that strategies for developing a positive psychological contract should include:

 Provision of opportunities for learning, training and development

 Focus on job security, promotion and careers

 Minimising status differentials

 Fair reward systems

 Comprehensive communication and involvement processes. Practices that can be incorporated into the strategy include:

 During recruitment interviews, presenting the unfavourable as well as the favourable aspects of a job in a realistic job preview.

 In induction programmes, communicating to new starters the organisation's personnel policies and procedures and its core values; indicating to them the standards of performance expected in such areas a quality and customer service and spelling out requirements for flexibility.

 Issuing and updating employee handbooks that reinforce the messages delivered in induction programmes.

 Encouraging the development of performance management processes that ensure that performance expectations are agreed and reviewed regularly.

 By encouraging the use of personal development plans that spell out how continuous improvement of performance can be achieved, mainly by self-managed learning.

 By using training and management development programmes to underpin core values and define performance expectations.

 By ensuring, through manager and team leader training, that managers and team leaders understand their roles in managing the employment relationship, through such processes as performance management and team leadership.

 By encouraging the maximum amount of contact between managers and team leaders and their team members, to achieve mutual understanding of expectations and to provide a means of two-way communications.

 By adopting a general policy of transparency, ensuring that on all matters which affect them, employees know what is happening, why it is happening and the impact it will make on their employment, development and prospects.

 By developing human resource procedures covering grievance handling; discipline; equal opportunities, promotion and redundancy and ensuring that they are

implemented fairly and consistently.

 By developing human resource policies covering the major areas of employment, development, reward and employee relations.

 By ensuring that the reward system is developed and managed to achieve equity, fairness and consistency in all aspects of pay and benefits.

 Generally, by advising on employment relations procedures, processes and issues that further good collective relationships.

You will have noticed that these strategies for managing the employment relationship by developing the psychological contract cover all aspects of people management!

We have talked about high commitment management in an earlier study unit. Commitment refers to feelings of attachment and loyalty and as such, plays an important part in human resource management philosophy and in approaches to employment relations.

Commitment is said to have three factors:

 A strong desire to remain a member of the organisation

 A strong belief in and acceptance of the values and goals of the organisation

 A readiness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organisation.

There are some accepted difficulties with the concept of commitment, or at least managing it. This is because organisations are made up of people with differing interests, rather than a set of shared interests. Furthermore, we have noted that a mixture of different interests and values encourages flexibility and creativity, so aiming for shared interests and beliefs may not be in the best interests of the organisation. That being said, there is no doubt that having a workforce that supports the values of the organisation is a useful thing.

Strategies for improving commitment are concerned with:

 Communication

 Education and training programmes

 Initiatives to increase involvement and 'ownership'

 Performance and reward management processes.

CIPD research in 1994 suggested that a strategy for building trust is the only basis upon which commitment can be generated. It commented that, in many organisations, there is a difference between what is said and what is done, to the extent that trust is destroyed and once compromised, is very difficult to renew.

Armstrong suggests that a strategy for creating a climate of trust should be based on the understanding that management is more likely to be trusted by employees when the latter:

 Believe that the management means what it says

 Observe that management does what it says it is going to do; suiting the action to the word

 Know from experience that management delivers the deal; it keeps its word and fulfils its side of the bargain

 Feel they are treated fairly, equitably and consistently.

Many writers argue that trust cannot be 'managed' as any attempt to 'create' it effectively destroys the basis of trust. What do you think?

F. HOW DO WE TAKE A STRATEGIC APPROACH TO

COMMUNICATING WITH EMPLOYEES?