Different Strategies for Employee Involvement

Content

INTRODUCTION:

MOTIVATION:

EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT:

TEAMWORK:

WORK PERFORMANCE:

KPI METHOD FOR MEASURING WORK PERFORMANCE:

COMPANY OVERVIEW:

IMPLEMENTING MOTIVATION ON TARGET COUNTRIES OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES:

OPPORTUNITIES, CHALLENGES AND COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS:

IMPLEMENTING TEAMWORK ON TARGET COUNTRIES OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES:

OPPORTUNITIES, CHALLENGES AND COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS:

IMPLEMENTING EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT ON TARGET COUNTRIES OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES:

IMPLEMENTING WORK PERFORMANCE ON TARGET COUNTRIES OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES:

RECOMMENDATION FOR THE OVERALL EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT STRATEGY:

ROLE OF VIRTUAL COMMUNICATION:

CONCLUSION:

REFERENCES:

Introduction:

Employee involvement one of the most important aspects which affect the work performance and prove worker effectiveness. The main idea behind employees’ involvement is to transfer the knowledge from the top management level down to the employees who deal with the customers and daily operation because they are the best people who can give accurate feedback about the decision taken and its reflection to the organization and customers (Ciavarella, 2003). Human resource practices play a vital role in the employee involvement process as because of their strategic view they can align the employee interest with the firm interest to produce an employee who has the capability and the willingness of improving the organization (Andries and Czarnitzki, 2014). The firm can get great benefit from involving and empowering employees by allowing them to discover and utilize their knowledge in the organization (Ciavarella, 2003). It is not only about sharing information and about thinking how to improve work processes and performance, but the successful Implementation of the employees’ involvement may include the decision-making involvement and took some responsibilities with some freedom of innovation (Andries and Czarnitzki, 2014). This paper will discuss the employees’ involvement strategies like motivation, teamwork, involvement and work performance and will discuss its opportunities and challenges while implementing it with different cultures.

Motivation:

The employees’ motivation is one of the essential factors to improve work performance; it covers all the aspects that capable of given them the ability to increase his willingness to achieve certain goals (Adair, 2006).

Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs theory categorized the people needs under five categories, which are Physiological needs, Security and safety needs, social needs, self-esteem needs and self-actualization needs (Viorel et al., 2009). Physiological needs include food, closes and house while security needs from employees’ perspective is the threats of losing his job. Acceptance one of the motivators on the level of social needs while self-esteem and self-actualization related by getting opportunity to creativity and achievement. (Fisher, 2009).

Another popular motivation theory is Fredrick Herzberg’s two factors theory; this theory mentioned that the two factors that affect worker motivation are Hygiene factors and motivator factors (Viorel et al., 2009). Hygiene factors include salaries, benefits, work policies and work environment while motivator factors are promotions, achievement, responsibility and career ladder (Fisher, 2009).

The managers using Maslow’s theory should give attention to the level of need which their employee reach as the opportunities that they can offer to them as a motivation tool depends on which level of needs they are now (Fisher, 2009). Viorel et al (2009) urged that only motivator items will directly reflect the employee performance but from Fisher’s (2009) point of view manager who will implement Frederick’s theory should give attention for both factors even it is somehow difficult to meet hygiene needs with motivators.

Employee Involvement:

Successful organization must include the employee involvement concept in its strategic view and its design from top to the bottom (Zatzick and Iverson, 2011). Because employee involvement has a positive effect to the organization, as given them the opportunity to share the decision making, setting policies and controlling their density not only give great effect on the level of loyalty but also, on the level of organization productivity, quality and customer satisfaction (Walter and Roger, 1990).

Job demands-resources (JD-R) model, which mentioned in Selander (2015), concluded that there are two main factors affect positively the work engagement, which are job resources and job demands. Job resources include job control, direct manager social support and colleagues’ social support. Job demand, which includes job skills, work load, organizational aspects and work time flexibility (Wu et. al, 2013). Job resources and social support are essential factors to increase employee engagement, which will be a good motivator toward work involvement (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007).

High-involvement work systems (HIWSs) model relies on HR practices to improve employee involvement as they have to motivate the employees and give them the opportunities to participate in the organization decision making such as motivate, consult, develop and recruit the employees (Boxal and Macky, 2009). The main concept of high-involvement work concluded in reforming the centralization of decision-making and problem solving processes to Taylorist processes for each work place (Edward and wright, 2001). In addition, management should give attention to employees’ voice as individuals and employees union as a group (Wood and Wall, 2007).

Teamwork:

Organizations are interested in teamwork because working as the team gives good advantage because of the diversity of knowledge and skills, which combined to achieve certain goal (Betts, 2015).

Tuckman (1965) cited in Bookman (1992) divided team development into five stages forming, norming, storming, producing and ending. During the forming process teamwork introduced to their missions and motivated to achieve the desired goals, team leader should confirm during this stage to assign the right persons to the right missions (Fulk et al., 2011). The norming stage will discuss the operating procedures, time taken, cost and the action taken if any member didn’t finish his assigned mission (Bookman, 1992), the team leader should clarify the goals and the mission objectives during this stage (Fulk et al., 2011). During the storming stage, the team leader will explain how to deal with the different types of conflict and problems. Producing stage will discuss the achievements and monitoring the job quality and improvement opportunities. The final process will be the ending process this may be when one of the team members lift the team or at the project ending. (Bookman, 1992).

Individual and relational self-concept which mentioned in Narayan and Steele (2012) urged that working as individual tasks within a team may give more efficiency and productivity because the varieties of identities in one team may affect the whole team performance. The role context gives a positive effect on the level of self-esteem and social identity as they can express their capabilities in the individual tasks within a team which will give them the feeling of that they are playing an important role within the team.

Work Performance:

High performance work system concept HPWS claims that there are main three parameters shapes the pattern of work performance which are, work practices, organization performance and systemic effects (Boxal and Macky, 2009).

Work practices is the implementation of the work system and how the employees are discipline toward it, it requires a high level of control, skilled and trained people. Organizational performance depends on many outcomes and aspects like social responsibilities, cost control, overhaul economic situation. The systemic effect is the work system which settled by managers and shared within employees, this system has the ability to enhance the work performance by facilitation of the work methods.

KPI method for measuring work performance:

Measuring the work performance is very important to analyze the company performance and check the strong points which need to sustain it and also, to put hand on the weak points which need improvement. KPI’s should be measure frequently and well explained to all related team members also, managers should set a target for each employee depends on his job category to evaluate the employees’ performance (Graham et al., 2015). One of the most important aspects which affect the KPI implementation is data accuracy as confirming the accuracy of the data will give accurate results which can be used in the decision making and improvement strategies (Brandt, 2013).

Company Overview:

JLR company one of the leading luxury vehicles companies all over the world. It is a British origin company owned by Indian group. JLR total vehicle sales exceeded 400,000 vehicles last year and its target to reach 1 million vehicles by the end of 2020. Customer satisfaction one of the most interests for JLR as it working with high class customers expecting high level of products and services. There is around 29000 people working with JLR worldwide in several departments Manufacturing, Sales, Marketing, Customer service and After sales department, this report will discuss the employee involvement in Germany, USA and China.

The Psychological contract mentioned in Steers et al. (2010) concluded that both employees and organizations have different cultures, expectations and interpretations of exchange relationships. Employees offering their capabilities, skills and loyalty in varying degrees, on the other hand organizations offer salaries, work environment and job stability in varying degrees. Because of the difference of employees’ cultures from a country to another, the managers who involved in international business must give great attention to employee behavior and understanding their culture in the way to a successful relationship which will result superior performance to the organization (Steers et al., 2010).

Implementing motivation on target countries opportunities and challenges:

Motivating multi cultures employees not an easy job as different cultures result different motivating tools as what rewarding people depending on their background (Rehu et al., 2005). Chinese employees seem to have a low work engagement due to low motivation if compared by the job achieved and because of that they are accepting the lowest level of motivation also, they find the family related rewards are a very good motivator (Gunkel, 2006). US society is described as individualistic society, the US employees give more attention to the rewards which focusing on the employee himself as an individual and recognize his own work like the employee of the month reward or positive feedback from his manager (Rehu et al., 2005). Job stability and going up on the hierarchy ladder considered as a great motivator for the German employees who are given great attention to the job position and consider it as a prestige tool (Gunkel, 2006).

Implementing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory will not give a positive effect within the Chinese employees because they are accepting the basic level of motivation but applying Fredrick Herzberg’s two factors theory will give better results specially the motivator factors. On the other hand, Maslow’s theory will give greater effect if it well implemented on the German and US employees specially if it focused on job security and self-esteem factors.

Opportunities, challenges and communication problems:

The opportunity here is to combined the monetary incentive with the monetary incentive depending on the achievement and the other factors like hierarchy ladder or job security. Rehu et al. (2005) urged that the main objective of work is the financial income also, give some freedom to employees for innovation and creativity specially in German society which consider offering high responsibility and creativity is the only way to move on the hierarchy ladder (Gunkel, 2006). The main challenges will be the balance between the pay for performance and workload specially for the Chines employees who may consider it as overload for them also, offering work environment and the work ethic is a big challenge for the US and German employees. Different languages and the distance between the countries and head office will be the main communication problem which the company can avoid by the monthly meeting to reduce the gap between the head office and the targeted countries.

Implementing Teamwork on target countries opportunities and challenges:

Chinese and German employees are known as a great work teams so implementing teamwork within those two countries will not be an issue, implementing Tuckman model on those countries will be very useful as they are used to work within teams but the company should give attention to some point during the implementation such as choosing the team members who can achieve company targets and objectives during the forming stage and clarify the role of each one of the team specially within the Chinese team because as McClelland (2008) Chinese employees working as great teams if the role clarified clearly by the team leaders. As mentioned above US employees preferred to work as individuals more than work within teams because of that the applying of Individual and relational self-concept will be useful in the US case by adjusting the individual tasks within the teams to get the best results.

Opportunities, challenges and communication problems:

The company can get great results in China and German teams if the target setting based on the overall team performance but, the challenge here that the company should give attention to the individual performance within the team as it may result to some poor performance from some members which will not be noticed if the total team achievement is good. The US team challenge will be how to merge the individual skills and performance in the direction of the total team performance and setting the evaluations individually but also, within the achievement of the overall team targets (Narayan and Steele, 2012). Communication problem again will be the languages difference and the distance. There is another one here within the Chinese team is that they don’t have the confident to speak openly with their supervisors unlike the US employees who are known as a good manner people with their managers and they know how to deliver their point of view and the German employees who are used to share in the decision making and the work conditions conversations (Gunkel, 2006).

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