Solution

Differences Between Employee Involvement and Participation

Employee involvement is a management driven initiative to encourage employees to give their ideas and feedback, but the final decisions lie with leadership. According to CIPD (2025a), it increases engagement and morale but has minimal impact in decision making power. On the other hand, employee participation gives employees a more direct role in decision making, allowing them to participate in decision making in a more formal ways, for example, committees, working groups and consultative meetings. In this case, employees play an active role in developing workplace policies and practices (Taylor & Woodhams, 2016).

Employee Involvement Example

An example of employee involvement is the implementation of staff suggestion scheme. Here, management provides an opportunity for employees to submit ideas on how to improve service or increase operational efficiencies, which are then reviewed and implemented as appropriate. This may help employees affected by recent changes in the merged public sector organisation to voice constructive feedback in a safe, recognised forum. Young (2024) mentions that this creates trust because staff believes their knowledge and opinions are considered, even if the leadership makes the final decisions. Employees who feel that leadership is approachable and ready to listen will establish positive working relationships. Furthermore, involvement initiatives can help reduce anxieties during this significant organisational change by providing staff with a platform for input while supporting morale and continuity, particularly as the new leadership team settles in.

Employee Participation Example An example of effective employee participation involves creating a joint consultative committee (JCC) comprising….

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