5.2 Providing employee voice and influence

By Liz Evans

Employees are the resources of an organization in the same way as material assets but they are also the firm’s stakeholders. The concept of employees as stakeholders refers to the interest employees have in the success of the company and the fact that actions taken by the organization directly affect the employees (Olson, 2003). Employees’ stakes in the company are economic in the fact that their livelihood comes from the firm, psychological in that they derive pride from their work, and political in terms of their rights as employees and citizens. Though employees are the stakeholders who are arguably most visible to management on a day-to-day basis, they do not often command the majority of attention in terms of decision-making influences. The short-term, economic duties to stockholders often command more managerial attention in the decision making process than employee opinion (Peterson, 2005). According to Jones, the best way to incorporate employees' stake to improve firm performance is through employee participation and influence (Employees as Stakeholders, 1997).

Apart from unionization, employees can obtain influence in organizational decisions in several ways. Grievance and Due Process Systems allow employees to address grievances and to argue their point if they feel they are wronged by management or another employee. Participation Systems provide employees with influence in the organizational or managerial decision making processes. This subchapter will discuss the ways employees are given voice and influence in non-unionized workplaces, with particular attention paid to influence in decision-making and organizational success. This will include the benefits of employee input to the firm, the difference between voice and influence, and the many participation mechanisms management can use to harness employee influence into decision-making.

There are benefits to a firm for providing employee influence. For one, strong employee voice and influence mechanisms are an important part of a High-Performance Human Resource System in which the human resources of the firm are coordinated and “designed to maximize the quality of human capital in the organization” (Becker&Huselid, 2001). Voice and influence mechanisms allow employees to give input and to contribute their expertise to business success; these mechanisms allow firms to get the most benefit from the skills of their human capital. Thus, firms with employee influence mechanisms get higher financial return from their employee assets; high-performance HR systems improve the financial bottom line of the firm (Becker&Huselid, 2001).