Should membership in employee involvement programs be voluntary?

z zyx zyxwv zyxwv zy Should Membership in Employee Involvement Programs Be Voluntary? Richard 3. Magjuka A key issue confronting managers when designing employee involvement programs (EIPs) & membership status. This refers to whether the cotporation requires employees toparticipatein an H P or allows voluntary participation. Employees report that membershi@status is a key W e when designing an EIC since it can send a powerful signaCpositive or negative-concerning the potential benefits that can be derived from the program. To support thzS view, a series of research studies on the effects of membership status on employeeperformanceare reviewed below. Drawing on extensive consulting experience; data acquired from thousands of interviews with employees, staff and management; and a few thousand questionnaire responses to surveys on EIP desgn and adminatraiion practices in American business, the author examines key aquments that support EIP voluntary membenhippolicies. His discussion sheds light on a paradoxical &sue concerning EIPs-namely, ifEIP is thefoundation to a firm’s competitiveness and, in fact, to its vety survival, then why 13 participation by employees in EIP voluntary in a laqe percentage of U.S. companies? RichardJ. Magizlka is aprofasor in the Department of Management at Lndiam UniversipSchool of Business in Bloomington. His article “Examining Barriers to Integrating ElP into Daily Operatiodappeared in the Winter 1991192 issue of NPR. A recent survey found that three-fourths of American businesses have implemented an employee involvement program (EIP). Meanwhile, the focus of EIPs has shifted from improving the quality of employees’worklife to improving the firm’s competitiveness. That is, firms increasingly are linking EIPs to attaining organizational outcomes; individual outcomes are secondary. In part, this trend reflects an underlying change in how firms organize to produce and deliver goods and services. For example, more and more manufacturing firms are pursuing strategies that emphasize production flexibility and timely delivery. By necessity, these strategies require corporate policies that involve employees on the shop floor to collaborate with employees from engineering, production, and managerial groups to reach corporate goals. Moreover, employee involvement is needed to effectively implement many advanced manufacturing techniques and procedures, such as cellular manufacturing and quality deployment. But the increasingly central role of EIPs in daily operations is not limited to manufacturers. Employee involvement is necessary to improve customer service and raise the level of customer satisfaction. In a recent article, S.W. Gellerman observed that a fundamental assumption in design-whether it affects a building, an organization, an zyxwvutsr National Productivity Rmiew/Spring 1992 203 zyxwvutsr zyxwvuts Richard -7.Magjuka armchair, or an information system-is that form follows function. That is, an object’s or program’s structure should be designed to directly contribute to its intended purpose. While this is not a new idea-social theorists developed a theory of functionalism that addressed the relationship between form and function nearly fifty years ago-it remains a vibrant one today. This leads to questions concerning the relationship between EIP goals and EIP design. Firms can design EIPs so that they simultaneously attain both employee and organizational goals. Yet, personal and organizational outcomes often do not coincide, and indeed, often can conflict. When there is conflict between EIP goals and EIP purpose, managers and EIP administrators must blaze a trail of cooperation by establishing a hierarchy of EIP goals and objectives. Increasingly, firms are placing organizational goals above employee-centered outcomes. Again, this is not surprising, since management has to satisfy fiduciary responsibilities. However, although the last decade has witnessed a dramatic transformation in the goals and objectives of EIPs, managers remain reluctant to address the important issue of employee membership status in an EIP. zyxwv zyxwvu zyxwvu i ...managersand EIP administrators must blaze a trail of cooperation by establishing a hierarchy of EIP goals and objectives. MEMBERSHIP STATUS-AND ITS SYMBOLS Membership status refers to a corporate policy concerning employee involvement that outlines whether employees are required to participate in an EIP or whether participation is voluntary. When participation in the EIP is required, management establishes employee obligations concerning EIP performance. If participation in the EIP is voluntary, then an employee participates with no organizational constraint. Presumably, when membership status is voluntary, employees formulate their own goals and establish their own responsibilities while participating in an EIP project. Over time, membership status can take on a more complex form that transcends the simple dichotomy of required versus voluntary membership status. For example, at a Ford Motor Company plant in Bedford, Indiana, employees are required to participate in the firm’s employee involvement program, which is called the QAT (Quality Action Team) process. Yet, there is also a voluntary component to participation. The QAT process operates within a two-tiered structure comprising business meetings and task forces. All employees are required to participate in the QAT business meetings that are held during company time. In contrast, participation in QAT task forces is voluntary. When problems are identified during the business meeting, employees establish an ad-hoc task force to address it. One can only assume that when firms design EIPs to accomplish a more diverse set of goals and objectives, then it becomes more difficult to categorize membership status in an EIP. However, this should not obscure the fact that employees demand that the organization clearly define membership status. Membership status is an important aspect of the design of an EIP, since it provides management and employees with information about the program and helps employees form expectations about its potential 204 zyxwvutsrqpon zy National Productivity RevieudSpring 1992 zyxwv zy zyxwv zyx Should Membership in Employee Involvement Programs Be Voluntary? effectiveness. Research and consulting experience indicate that membership status gives employees and managers a strong signal regarding potential success or failure. ...voluntary status appears to send a positive signal to employees only when the purpose Of the EIP is unequivocally tied to employee-centered outcomes. Employees See Mandated Membership as More Effective In a series of studies conducted in Midwestern manufacturing plants, shop floor employees were asked to evaluate required and voluntary membership practices in EIPs. Employees consistently evaluated EIPs that required employees to participate to be potentially more effective and more central to organizational operations than voluntary programs. This preference for required membership is not limited to EIPs. Another study found that corporate trainees evaluated their training program as more important and, in fact, learned more from it when they were required to attend training sessions than when their participation was voluntary. Again, the research evidence suggests that for many employees, voluntary membership status signals a lesser degree of importance. Voluntary status appears to send a positive signal to employees only when the purpose of the EIP is unequivocally tied to employee-centered outcomes. Employees consistently offer a few reasons to support the belief that required membership communicates a positive signal to employees: zy In for-profit organizations, nearly every practice, program, or initiative implemented by an organization with a goal of improving competitiveness has a required membership status. When membership status is required, participants can rely on the consistent support of others in the firm, especially the help of employees on the shop floor and of support staff. When membership status is required, participants can more easily predict the types and amount of corporate resources that can be used to achieve EIP outcomes. When membership status is voluntary, participants cannot predict who will participate, whose support will be received, which projects will be selected, and whether projects will be pursued over time. When membership status is voluntary, it is difficult to establish an organizational mechanism for compensating EIP efforts that all employees will consider equitable. The fact that most employers routinely coordinate and control organizational activities that are important for organizational survival readily explains these beliefs. Of course, the form and content of organizational control can vary greatly, from explicit to implicit and from formal to informal. But, regardless of a firm’s control mechanisms, central organizational activities rest on its members’ organizationally required or mandatory behaviors. By signaling what is important to members, organizations influence their activities. Organizations reward members for performing effectively on important activities. Financial rewards, promotions, and careers are Natwnal Productivity Review/Spring 1992 205 Richard 3. Magjuku zyxwvutsr intimately tied to performing well on activities that the firm values. Extrinsic rewards and sanctions guide employees to perform activities advocated by the organization. By linking individual behaviors with extrinsic rewards, organizations align personal with organizational goals. In short, an organization generally requires what is important. Therefore, it would seem that required membership status sends an important positive signal to employees concerning the potential effectiveness of an EIP. By requiring participation, a firm says that the EIP is important for organizational success, that EIP operations will be supported and evaluated as an important organizational initiative, and that participants will be evaluated accordingly. In contrast, voluntary participation sends these negative messages to employees: that the EIP is not important to organizational survival, that EIP efforts will not occur within an integrated performance improvement initiative, and that organizational rewards for employees tend to be indirect and informal. zyxwv zyxwv zyxwvut ...American busi- nesses have not reached a consensus on the potential influence of membership status on EIP performance. Membership Status Is N o w Mostly Mixed Despite the fact that membership status sends an important signal to employees concerning the potential effectiveness of an EIP, American businesses have not reached a consensus on the potential influence of membership status on EIP performance. In a recent survey of U.S. firms, nearly 50 percent reported that at least one group of employees is required to participate in the firm’s EIP, while approximately 30 percent required employees from all levels to participate in the firm’s EIP. Although the survey found that respondents expect more employees will be required to participate in an EPI in the future, membership status for participants in EIPs is mixed at almost 70 percent of the firms. Typically, firms that report a mixed membership status allow hourly employees to voluntarily participate but require staff and management to participate in EIP activities. This lack of consensus concerning membership status for employees in an EIP is interesting. Specifically, why is membership status mixed in a majority of EIPs? This question is especially pertinent when one considers that most firms report that their EIP primarily is designed to attain organizational goals. In many respects, voluntary membership status in an organizational intervention represents an island of volunteerism amid a sea of required behaviors and activities. zyxwvuts zyx zy WHY THEN DOES VOLUNTARY MEMBERSHIP STATUS PERSIST? There are four explicit reasons why organizations allow voluntary membership status in their EIP: 1. A “DelicateFlower’LProbably the single most common theme concerning voluntary membership status is management’s belief that for EIPs to be effective, employees must be intrinsically motivated to participate in them. People must want to participate simply for the sake of participating withput the influence of external factors. According to this 206 National Productivity Review/Spring 1992 Should Membership in Employee Involvement Pmgrams Be Voluntary? view, EIPs are most effective when only those who really want to be there participate in the program. To require participation would cause the delicate flower of intrinsically motivated behavior to wilt and die. The root of this belief can be found in an influential stream of research on intrinsic motivation conducted in the 1960s and 1970s. These findings led many corporate trainers, consultants, and business educators to conclude that when external forces are applied to activities that have been conducted for formerly intrinsic reasons, then the level of intrinsic motivation decreases and performance declines. But even if it is true that performance increases when employees are intrinsically motivated to participate in an EIP, it is also a fact that expectations create self-fulfilling cycles. That is, if employees believe that voluntary membership status indicates that an EIP is not important to the organization or that it is unlikely to be effective, then employees will not succeed. Voluntary membership status for an EIP invites the creation of a negative self-fulfilling prophecy for the eventual success of an EIP. This explains why a large percentage of EIPs with a voluntary membership status die after a few years and are disbanded. In addition, there are many other potential motivating forces for employees besides intrinsic motivators. At this stage, relatively little is known about how different motivating forces combine and interact to affect behavior in organizations. For example, the way in which intrinsic motivators and expectancy, which are only two of many motivators in organizations, combine to affect an employee is not well understood. It might be true that voluntary membership status enhances employees’ intrinsic motivation, but the voluntary aspect of membership status also could set in motion a self-fulfilling cycle of negative employee expectations concerning the EIP. Therefore, it is difficult, if not impossible, to predict the overall motivational effects of voluntary membership status. 2. r f You Begin with a Core Group, the Rest Will Come-This theme suggests again that a primary benefit of voluntary membership status is that it ensures that the EIP’s participants will really want to be there. And this core group will become a foundation on which the EIP will grow. Once a core group is established and the scope of participation enlarges in a firm, then employees who participate will increasingly exert informal peer pressure on nonparticipants. Over time, nearly all employees will be informally pressured to participate. While plausible, this view suffers for two reasons. First, this theme does not argue that employees work best when membership status is voluntary. Instead, after a critical level of voluntary participation is reached, then informal peer pressure can be exerted by participants to coerce other employees to participate. Do employees who respond to peer pressure truly believe that their membership status is voluntary? Second, this view begs the question as to whether organizations currently have mechanisms to motivate a core group of employees to contribute effectively to required organizational initiatives. 3. WeCannotAfford To CompensateEmployees WhoParticipate in the z zyxwv zyxwv zyxwvut zyxwvuts ...relatively little is known about how different motivating forces combine and interact to affect behavior in organizations. zyxwvutsr National Productivity Review/Sprimg 1992 207 zyxwvutsrq zyxwvutsr zyx Rkburd 3. Magjuku ...firms have asked their employees to perform activities without linking performance to added compensation. 208 UP-This theme is more complex. Its basic elements are: (1) if membership status is required, then employees treat participation as an extra duty or responsibility; (2) if participation represents an extra duty, then employees expect to receive additional compensation for their extra duties; (3) since our firm cannot afford to increase compensation, then membership status cannot be required; and, therefore, (4) an EIP with voluntary membership status is best for the firm. Again, there are alternative views. First, stripped to its simplest components, EIPs establish an organizational framework that increases the firm’soverall decision-making capacity. Thus, for most employees, participation in EIPs leads to an increase in the thinking and communicating activities in which they engage while performing EIP activities. In this regard, it is difficult to discern whether the presence of EIPs requires a greater change in the skills and abilities of shop floor employees than do other technological changes in many organizations. For example, the implementation of many information and production technologies in organizations have changed employee skill sets. It is not at all clear why employers must link the implementation of an EIP to additional compensation when other new technologies have been introduced without additional compensation. For example, in many firms, employees would not expect to receive extra compensation when the firm introduces electronic mail to an office or Pareto charts and numerical controls to the shop floor. Another obvious reply is that firms have asked their employees to perform activities without linking performance to added compensation. For example, corporate downsizing, flatter organizational structures, plant closings, and salary givebacks have become commonplace. The implications are straightforward. In the current business environment, members of a firm’s current labor force represent survivors of the turbulent 1980s. Top management expects middle managers and shop floor employees to accept increased duties and responsibilities to improve the firm’s competitiveness, to ensure the firm’ssurvival, and, therefore, to keep their jobs and benefits intact. In this setting, requiring participation to increase organizational survival does not appear to be an unreasonable corporate policy. Moreover, it does not seem naive to believe that all or most employees would comply. During a recent conversation, a plant manager said he believed that his labor force would balk at requiring participation and that this would hurt the effectiveness of the EIP. Subsequent background interviews showed that in the last three years the average wage rate for shop floor employees had declined over 30 percent, employee contributions to the company’s health plan had increased by over 60 percent, and there had been a 33 percent reduction in the labor force! After all these setbacks for the work force,this same manager did not believe that he could set a policy for the plant that required members to contribute to the firm’s EIP, which was directed at quality improvement. This is especially paradoxical when one zyxwv z zyx zy National Productivity Review/Spring 1992 z zyxwv zyxwvu Should Membership in Employee Involvement Pmgram Be Voluntary? considers that to continue being a preferred supplier for the firm’s major customers, considerable improvement had to be made in quality performance. The employees who still work at the plant have already demonstrated their commitment to the firm-or, at least, their economic dependence on continued employment at the firm-simply by virtue of their continued employment there. 4. OurOtganizationalCultureEncouragesCreatiuityandAutonomy- Drawing on ideas that have already been discussed, this theme suggests that only a voluntary membership status would work in an organization that emphasizes self-regulation. This theme also reflects a view of creativity that draws heavily on a theory of intrinsic motivation-that is, employees are more creative when addressing problems and issues that they identify and then attempt to solve. While this may be an accurate portrayal of the condition under which people are more creative, one should remember that employees can identify and attempt to solve problems in EIPs when membership status is either voluntary or required. As has been shown at the Ford Bedford, Indiana, plant where membership status is required, employees can form teams to address problems that they identify. Conversely, employees can be blocked from addressing critical problems under either type of membership status. Organizational culture can facilitate employee creativity under either EIP design. zyxwv zyxwvu zyxwvuts Implicit Reasons In addition to these explicit reasons given by organizations for insisting on voluntary membership status in EIPs, there are four implicit reasons: 1. Incremental Gradualism Is the Most Prudent Strategy for Impleto this reasoning, an incremental strategy is congruent with a policy of voluntary membership status. But, here too, it is important to note that aithough selecting a voluntary membership status might reflect a logical plan, in practice voluntary membership status establishes its own negative, self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to the ultimate demise of the EIP. 2 . TheEIP WillNeverBeMorethan aMarginalContributorto Effective Operations-Interviews show that middle and lower-level managers consistently expect to reap the fewest benefits from EIPs. Voluntary membership status in EIP supports these beliefs. This is typically how the rationale goes: (1) It is not highly likely that the EIP will be a star contributor in my organization. (2) However, it is possible that something positive can be achieved through EIP (and top management expects me to develop an EIP in my organization). (3) Let’s take a wait-and-see attitude toward the program. (4) Voluntary membership status minimizes the potential costs and liabilities incurred in developing an EIP. According to this logic, if participation is voluntary, fewer employees will require training. Second, it will be easier to compartmentalize the EIP, limiting its effects to selected departments or areas of operations. Third, less menting an BP-According ...Interviews show that mkidle and lower-levelmangers consistently expect to reap the fewest benefits from EIPs. Natwnui Productivity Review/Spring 1992 zyxwvu 209 Rubad 3. Mag.juka ... zyxwvutsr zyxw zyx zyxw informal currency-goodwill-will have to be spent to support its development. In addition, it will be easier to treat the EIP with voluntary status as a stand-alone program that can quickly be shut down and disbanded in case it fails. Although this strategy might limit the risks of implementing EIP and the associated costs of disbanding it, it is hard to envision how this strategy enables the EIP to contribute to organizational effectiveness. 3. Management Reduces Its Responsibility If the EIP F a i l s W h e n an EIP is built on voluntary participation, it is easy for management to treat it as “their”(the employee-volunteers’) program, so that the employees are responsible for its outcomes. Although responsibility may spill over onto EIP coordinators, facilitators, and administrators (if there are any), the onus is placed squarely on the shoulders of the shop floor employees. If an EIP fails, then it is the labor force that must bear the blame. Of course, if an EIP contributes significantly to organizational objectives, then it is also likely that the focus will stay on the shop floor, and management must content itself with the fact that performance goals will be attained or surpassed. Interviews in numerous plant locations show that a key advantage of voluntary EIP membership status is that it enables managers to avoid responsibility for the EIP’s performance. This leads to the next theme on voluntary membership. 4. Management Does Not Have To Learn How To Design a n d Administer an EIP that Affects Organizational Outcomes-If management increases the level of expectations concerning the organizational benefits to be obtained from an EIP and what is expected from shop floor employees, then employees will expect more from management. In many firms, managers admit that they are not sure how to integrate an EIP into daily operations to achieve corporate objectives. Therefore, rather than bite off more than they can chew, they opt for voluntary membership status instead of developing their skills in designing and administering the EIP. zyxwv zyxwv zyxwvu zyxwvut managers...opt for voluntary membership status instead of developing their skills in designing and admLnistering the EIP. A CALL FOR CRITICAL EVALUATXON If the design of an EIP is to follow the purpose of an EIP, it is reasonable to assume that there will be significant differences in how it is designed and administered when its purpose is focused on organizational rather than employee outcomes. Membership status has emerged as a key element in design that sharply differentiates EIPs. Although there is the potential for many creative strategies for structuring membership status, there are two broad categories for doing so: voluntary and required. There is little doubt that a voluntary membership status represents the most appropriate strategy for an EIP when its purpose is to facilitate the personal development of employees or to allow for the satisfaction of psychological needs. However, if the purpose of an EIP is continuous improvement, rapid response, or quality improvement, the rationale for allowing membership status to remain voluntary is less clear. Further, there is a lack of consensus among firms on the merits of each type of membership status in American business. This is puzzling since in most organizations there is a clear link 210 National Productivity Review/Spring 1992 zy zyxwv zy zyxwv zyxwvu Should Membership in Employee Involvement Programs Be Voluntary? ...arguments in favor of voluntary membership status do not complement many other beliefs and practices that employees associate with effective organizational interventions. between what is important and what is expected and required of management and employees. In all, there are eight possible reasons for voluntary membership: Four are publicly voiced and four represent covert or implicit beliefs that surfaced during interviews with managers and employees in numerous firms. Although it is nearly impossible to prove that the arguments in support of or against voluntary membership status are unequivocably right or wrong, arguments in favor of voluntary membership status do not complement many other beliefs and practices that employees associate with effective organizational interventions. In summary, if form does follow function, then it is quite possible that employees expect that the form of EIPs be changed to reflect the increasing emphasis on the importance of those programs to organizational, and not personal, outcomes. A key change suggested by this transformation is in membership status-from voluntary to required. The most powerful factor influencing a firm’s decision to maintain a voluntary membership is that its managers do not believe their own rhetoric. As a result, voluntary membership status allows them to limit the potential costs of failure. Therefore, American managers need to ask themselves whether the lack of consensus concerning membership status represents confusion over which form is appropriate or whether it is indicative of corporate rhetoric overreaching corporate beliefs and actions. In any case, it is time for firms to critically examine the relationship between the function of the EIP in their firm and its form, with special emphasis on the role of membership status. Their success depends on it. 0 zyxwvu zyxwv zyx zy References Baldwin, T.T. and R.J. Magjuka (1991). Organizational training and signals of importance: linking pretraining perceptions to intention to transfer. Human Resource Development Quarterly 2:25-36. Gellerman, S.U. (1990). In organizations, as in architecture, form follows function, Organization Dynamics. Magjuka, R.J. (1989). Participative systems: towards a technology of design. Research in the Sociology of Organizations 7:79-115. Magjuka, R.J. (1991). Examining barriers to integrating EIP into daily operations. National Productivity Review 10:327-37. National Productivity Review/Spring 1992 211