Ch. 12: Employee participation
Chapter 12 deals with employee participation, the sixth HPWP. The lecture, given by an HR consultant who also leads a union-driven career project, has three parts: an introduction on the changing world of work, participation at team level, and participation through labour unions, with the central question: are labour unions the missing link in the transition of the labour market? The subtitle is 'HR strategy as a means for unions to regain their lost position'. The project details are used as an example.
1. Background: forms of employee participation
Employee participation means that employees have influence on decisions about their work and their organization. Two broad forms are usually distinguished:
| Form | Description | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Direct participation | Employees themselves take part in decisions about their own work | Autonomous or self-managing teams, team goal setting, work consultation, suggestion systems, involvement in appraisal design |
| Indirect (representative) participation | Employees are represented by elected or appointed representatives | Works councils, trade unions negotiating collective labour agreements (CLAs), employee representatives on boards |
In the Netherlands, an organization with 50 or more employees must install a works council (see Chapter 2), which has rights to information, advice and consent on important decisions. Trade unions negotiate CLAs at sector or company level. Participation is part of the HPWS because it increases the opportunity of employees to contribute (AMO model, Chapter 6) and because it supports legitimacy and the balance between employer and employee interests (Chapter 5).
2. The changing world of work
The lecture starts with an image from Modern Times (1936): the worker as part of the machine. Today organizations operate in a VUCA world:
- Volatile: changes are fast and unpredictable;
- Uncertain: the future is hard to predict;
- Complex: many interconnected factors;
- Ambiguous: situations can be interpreted in different ways.
There is an ongoing shift in business models:
- Standardized production: value creation through efficiency;
- Customer focus and/or service orientation: value creation through focusing on customers' needs;
- Knowledge or innovation driven: value creation through innovation and co-creation with customers.
As a result, the unit of productivity and knowledge shifts from the individual to the team: productivity is increasingly created by (cross-functional) teams, and knowledge becomes collective knowledge. A critical question: how well do teams actually use their collective knowledge in the average setting? Often not well, because of the informal organization: the 'real organization chart' is full of friendships, rivalries, secret deals and favours that run through the formal hierarchy.
No matter how good a strategy is, it will fail if the culture of the organization (shared values, informal norms, ways of working) does not support it. For participation this means that formal structures are not enough: the team culture must allow people to speak up and contribute.
3. Participation at team level: team processes
The lecturer presents seven team processes that make participation at team level work:
| Team process | What it means |
|---|---|
| Shared team goals | Team goals are leading; setting goals is a team process with participation of all team members; it requires understanding group dynamics and decision making based on dynamic judgement |
| Individual and team learning | Reflection is standard behaviour at individual and team level; knowledge, capacities, competencies and challenges of each member are clear; organized circles of (360-degree) feedback at individual and team level; the team knows its strengths and challenges and focuses on meeting the challenges |
| Appreciative development | Our strength is our focus; development goals that increase your strengths; the same at team level; showing empathy and giving compliments are key behaviours for personal and team development |
| Responsibility culture | Each member can speak freely; everything can be discussed; agreements are made based on equality; members hold each other accountable for agreements made |
| Core qualities and values | Why do we exist? What are the core qualities of our team? What are the core values we share? |
| Our ways of doing things | What works well (effects, causes)? What can be improved (effects, causes)? Addressing gossip ('slander'), choices and dilemmas |
| Dynamic judgement | A way of forming judgements together in which a shared question connects facts, concepts, feelings, goals and means |
The model (drawn as a figure of eight around a central question) connects four elements: facts ('perceiving'), concepts ('thinking'), goals ('will') and means ('acting'), with feelings ('feeling') in the middle. A good team judgement moves between observing the facts, thinking in concepts, clarifying what we want and deciding how to act, while acknowledging feelings. It prevents teams from jumping directly from facts to actions without shared understanding.
These team processes are forms of direct participation: employees shape their own goals, learning and ways of working. They link to goal setting theory (Chapter 8: participation in goal setting increases commitment), to the strengths approach (Chapter 2) and to opportunity-enhancing practices in the AMO model (Chapter 6).
4. Participation through labour unions: the example of a union coalition
The second part is about indirect participation via unions. The example is a coalition of 11 unions in the Dutch safety domain (police, defence, fire brigades, special investigating officers (BOA), ambulance services, private security, etc.):
- It aims at strengthening safety;
- The unions have a strong position in their fields of practice and strong roots among their members;
- They represent approximately 250,000 employees in the safety domain;
- They give integral advice about safety in the Netherlands to the Ministry of Justice and Security.
Traditional union services: negotiating the collective labour agreement; services for individual members such as legal support, health insurance, tax return help, an academy (health and vitality oriented courses), a web shop and discounts on products and services.
5. The labour market transition
The labour market is changing:
- An increasing number of employers in a career;
- More than one career in different areas of expertise;
- A shift from job orientation to talent orientation;
- A regional focus due to shared family responsibilities;
- An ageing workforce.
The safety domain specifically faces a structural shortage of workers, an ageing employee population and an increasing workload.
Wanted: a connected labour market. Currently, organizations focus on their own employees; branch organizations focus on their own members; the UWV (Employee Insurance Agency) only focuses on employees who have lost their job, with the principle 'the shortest way to work'. There is no institution that takes care of facilitating multiple careers.
A different paradigm: creating multiple careers for people during their working life. The vision of the coalition: supporting employees throughout their entire career, preferably in the safety domain. Initiatives include a career change project for BOAs, development advice for BOAs and police, a jobs website, connecting work and talent, an institute for safety with an academy, and a project called BREEF ('zero waste of talent').
6. The BREEF project (example)
BREEF (derived from the English word 'brave'; slogan 'matching with courage') offers:
- employees in the safety domain the opportunity to discover their career perspectives, also outside their specific area of expertise;
- applicants from outside the safety domain the opportunity to discover career perspectives in the safety domain.
Starting points: the person is leading; the person can decide on and do each step fully on his or her own; optimal use of talent (not school diplomas, but measured capacities are taken into account; e.g., about 90% of applicants who want to join the police are rejected, which wastes talent); optimal privacy; fully connected to the labour market policies of employers; a digital process.
Process flow of the transition platform: an employee or job seeker takes an interest test, receives information about sectors and occupations, goes through matching (including an integrity check), deepens the occupational picture, receives information about vacancies and a report with a list of options, and is then connected with a contact person of the employer for an application. The platform connects to 35 regional labour market centres.
Stakeholders: 35 regional labour market centres (inflow), vocational schools (MBO) with safety and security programmes, employers in the safety domain, union members, and two financiers (a union federation and a foundation that funds social security and labour market projects).
Building blocks: a transition platform providing relevant information; a matching tool for large-scale matching of talents and jobs; and a warm transfer to employers.
Results: the platform and matching tool are operational; a successful pilot with more than 200 employees, each finding 3 to 5 vacancies of choice, with a 'match' for almost everyone; employer commitment is an ongoing process; connection to the regional centres; a successful pilot with the MBO council (safety and security programmes with about 12,000 students yearly), giving students a wider job perspective, identified key competencies and focused learning points; and a pilot with the fire brigades. Timetable: by Q4 2025 the pilot with 200 matches was completed, financial accountability was delivered and a bonus for 200 matches was secured, with the aim of applying the arrangement in other sectors and creating new arrangements that unions can offer to employers and employees.
Reflections of stakeholders: employers reacted 'surprised' (unions interfering in their HR activities?); gaining mutual trust and aligning processes is slow; employers realize they have nothing in place for guiding multiple careers; vocational schools see many advantages (more opportunities and personal development for students, more students finding work in the domain); other branches are interested.
Reflections of participants: employees and applicants respond very positively; they appreciate personal contact and career coaching; they respond well to the appreciative development approach (motivating); they feel their strengths are valued through matching with concrete jobs (creating perspective); it confirms their level of intelligence and their social involvement in contributing to a safe society.
7. Lessons for HRM and participation
- Unions traditionally participate through collective bargaining and member services. Their position has weakened (lower membership, individualization of work).
- By using an HR strategy (career guidance, matching, employability development), unions can offer new value to members and employers and regain their position: the answer to the central question is that unions can be a missing link in the transition to a labour market with multiple careers.
- This connects participation to sustainable careers and employability (Chapter 10) and to talent management (Chapter 11: 'zero waste of talent', optimal use of talent rather than diplomas).
- At team level, participation requires a culture of shared goals, learning, appreciative development and responsibility; formal structures alone are insufficient ('culture eats strategy for breakfast').
Andere hoofdstukken van Strategic Human Resource Management
- Ch. 1: SHRM in the 21st century
- Ch. 2: SHRM and context (guest lecture)
- Ch. 3: Adding value through people (guest lecture)
- Ch. 4: Human resource metrics and measures
- Ch. 5: Mutual gains?
- Ch. 6: High performance work systems (guest lecture)
- Ch. 7: Selective recruitment and selection
- Ch. 8: Performance management
- Ch. 9: Compensation
- Ch. 10: Career development
- Ch. 11: Talent management
- Ch. 13: Human resource roles
- Ch. 14: International HRM