Employee Relations & Reward Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Employee Relations & Reward - Essay Example Decline in trade union membership and activities is the most obvious change occurred in workforce. In addition, employers are trying to make their workforce increasingly qualified by employing university and college educated fresh candidates. A particular focus is also given to part-time and other flexible forms of labour. In the view of a scholar, â€Å"intellectual capital - not natural resources, machinery, or even financial capital - has become the one indispensable asset of corporations† (Crainer 2006, p. 269). In order to keep pace with the changing economic environment, marketers give prime focus to their workforce and hence they promote employee participation. This paper will evaluate how employee involvement/participation influences the workplace and management strategies to enhance employee participation. Under the concept of employee participation/involvement, each employee is considered as a unique human being involved in achieving the organisation’s short term as well as long term goals. In other words, each employee’s contribution is separately valued by his/her management. According to Secord, â€Å"employee involvement is commonly defined as a range of processes designed to engage the support, understanding, and optimum contribution of all employees in an organisation and their commitment of its objectives† (Secord 2003, p. 231). The term employee involvement is a broad term, and it embraces several processes and arrangements performed between employers and employees. The term employee participation is interchangeably used with the term employee involvement. However, there is a slight difference between these two terms. As Secord (p. 231) says, the term employee participation represents an employee’s involvement in management decision making whereas the practice of employee involvement barely affects organisational decision making. As Jackson et al.