Lessons from Successful Companies
The National Centre for Employee Ownership in the US often writes about"Lessons from Successful Companies". The essence of what they have to say is as follows:
1. The people who have the most expertise in an area should be the ones making decisions about it; this is the most important point. When employee-driven communication becomes institutionalised in the culture of the company, there is freedom for sharing information. This takes the pressure off the manager to be the fount of all knowledge, and gives an opportunity to the worker who ordinarily would not want to air a different opinion to that of their manager.
2. If employees are to participate in decision-making, they need training to develop the necessary skills. This is important because people need to be taught to be participative. In some companies, new employees are assigned a mentor or guide for the first month or year, to familiarise them with the company's culture.
3. The personal commitment of the person at the top of the organisation is essential. Strong leadership is necessary to encourage employee participation and to overcome the natural resistance people have towards change. Commitment from the top is necessary to overcome paternalistic structures and dependency and cynicism from the workforce.
4. A set of written values embodying commitment to employee ownership is an important starting point. This 'value statement' must be more that just a set of platitudes or a public relations exercise. It must be a statement of the basic principles that should be a guide to everyone's actions. This includes guidelines for corporate ethics.
5. Information should flow freely from the top down and the bottom up - not just from employers, about what a good deal the employees are getting, but also employees in regards to workplace innovations and so on. Open door policies or more formal approaches, where employees are represented in decision-making committees and/or groups, are also effective in maintaining this 'information flow'.
6. Participative decisions take more time to make but less time and effort to implement than non-participatory decisions. It takes time to reach consensus, but once everyone is agreed, then implementing the decision is fairly smooth. If a decision is simply handed down from above, its implementation may be delayed by employee resistance.
Regretfully, no pat formulas exist for implementing 'ownership theory'. What works in one company may not work for another, or even the same company at a different stage of its development.
For more on employee buy-ins visit: www.aeoa.org.au