Introduction

Employee voice is an umbrella term used to capture the many forms of practice that give employees a view at work. These processes and structures enable, and at times empower, employees directly and indirectly to contribute to decision making in the business.
This report will look into two forms of employee voice; employee representative participation and direct employee involvement, it will look at a specific practice of each form of employee voice and analyse the strengths and weaknesses on their value to the employee. Representative Participation

In 1996 a European Works Council was made a mandatory feature of any organisation with over 1000 employees that operate in over 2 EU states (EUGOV, 1996). In the UK …show more content…

However this is only of value to the employee if they under no scepticism of the system and they believe it works and is of value to them, otherwise they will not participate and no changes will materialise. History of participation shows periods of development followed by periods of decay with little/no overall change (Ramsey, 1983).

Direct Employee Involvement

Employee involvement is not a new concept. In recent years many managerial initiative have sprung up in its name- quality circles, team briefings and team working are some examples. Employee involvement is alleged to be flexible and assumes a commonality of interests between management and employees. Quality circles are regular groups of employees who come together to discuss small incremental changes in the business. These groups are ‘continuous improvement’ driven and focus on getting employees involved in operational decision making in order to improve their direct line of work.

Strengths of Quality Circles for the employee

Direct employee involvement, specifically quality circles, are a Unitarist approach. Working in quality circles helps to encourage workers to take ownership for their work, it also gives them the opportunity to have direct influence over modifications to certain procedures that effect their everyday work. This improving worker motivation. Managers have the majority of power and decision making which