HRM Practices Of Employee Involvement And Employee Engagement

Employee Involvement is a philosophy which is being defined by the corporate structure and offers autonomy to non-managerial employees to participate in decision making (Storey, 2007). Through employee involvement, organizations fosters the working culture which can provide discretion to employees to affect the decisions associated with their job (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin and Cardy, 2004). On the other hand, the employee engagement refers to high commitment and motivation of employees to contribute for the betterment of organization. Therefore, the employee involvement is associated with the participation of employees to accomplish the mission and objectives of organization through their expertise, knowledge and learning and employee engagement is based on higher levels of integrity of employees and their trust on organization. The employee involvement and engagement have gained prominence due to innovation requirements of changing business environment which demands for high creativity among employees (Whitener, 2001). Employee empowerment is the requirement of organizations to cope with the drastically changing environment in globalized businesses (Zacharatos, Barling and Iverson, 2005). The employees who have the discretion to participate in decision making of the organization are more motivated towards their job due to enhanced sense of value and achievement (Boxall and Purcell, 2011). Similarly, the enthusiastic employees can increase the chances of success and can lead to competitive edge of the organization.

The non-hierarchal mode of organizations have found to offer more support to employees and in turn induces positive attitudes of employees towards their jobs (Kuvaas, 2006). Employees feel connected with the organization and they begin to own their work with greater responsibility which is indicative of the fact that high involvement of employees is indeed associated with high performance of employees (Laird, Holton and Naquin, 2003). Likewise, the employees become highly engaged in their jobs and their morale significantly increases towards their job. The research on the modern organizations has depicted that autonomy to employees and increased involvement of employees in organizational activities is found to be associated with better relationship among employees (Datta, Guthrie and Wright, 2005). Strong relationship among employees is the essence of recent organizations in which most of the operations are managed through team work (Dowling, 2008). Moreover, according to the view of need satisfying approach, when need of belongingness is well satisfied then the engagement of employees in contextual performance is likely to increase and they work efficiently for the betterment of organization.

The increased involvement and participation of employees contribute to lower the reliance of employees on management and self-managing phenomenon led them to perform with their full potential (Daley, 2006). It has been provided by the researchers that employees who learn to be self-sufficient with their work are the one who learn to overcome their mistakes at their own and improve their learning with time, which contributed to improved performance (Aguinis and Kraiger, 2009). Consequently, the employees generate positive perception of job importance and the result in their high engagement in job activities which contributes significantly in welfare of organization. The pattern of increased employee involvement and employee engagement reduces burden from the management and overcome the problems associated with micromanagement which are found to be associated with lower levels of productivity and performance of organization (Ramsay, Scholarios and Harley, 2000).Moreover, it is important to note that when employees become highly engage then they get involve in possessing extra role behaviors and perform discretionary tasks that go beyond their expected job tasks. Therefore, the high engagement of employees is mainly in favor of organization and it is also an indication of better management of human resources of the organization.

The most significant factors which differentiate businesses and establish competitive advantage are the people of an organization (Moreland and Myaskovsky, 2000). Therefore, enhancing the level of employee involvement and empowering them to solve organization’s problems can create a team of problem solver within organization (Paul and Anantharaman, 2003). Along with this, the motivation for engaging employees is substantial and it is associated with higher productivity rates. The urge to gain competitive advantage through people is fostering the organizations to rely on human resource management practices of employee involvement and employee engagement. The employee involvement and employee engagement are also most demanding among human resource management practices as contemporary employees do not prefer to be treated like machines and they require authority along with responsibilities. Thus, the contemporaryorganizations are involved in enhancing the level of trust of employees to encourage them for engaging effectively in their job activities and making them more engaged in their jobs.

Both the concept of employee involvement and employee engagement can be effectively applied in the McDonald’s which is one of the largest fast food chain in the world. The McDonald’s has about 36000 outlets in 119 countries across the world and the company is managing its people in the best possible manner which is contributing to high quality of services and satisfaction of its customers (Seibert, Silver and Randolph, 2004). The workforce of company is making it distinguishable from other fast food companies which is based on the belief that having work done through good people can help the company in achievement of its goal. The reliance of McDonald’s on best human resource management practices can be evinced by the notion that company has won award for its outstanding employee engagement strategy and they motivated their employees to work for excellence of the company (Algera and Greuter, 2013). Along with this, the McDonald’s is offering way to its employees to get involve in the routine decision making to handle situations in the restaurants which is enhancing the level of their service quality. The discretion to employees to make decisions is enabling them to deal with any circumstance in immediate manner which is allowing the company to become the most customer friendly organization and it is significantly affecting the sales of company as well. Higher reliance of McDonald’s on human resource management practices of employee involvement and employee engagement has led to the selection of this company and provided grounds for practically viewing the association of employee involvement and employee engagement with performance of the firm.

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References

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