Factors Influencing Employee Choices to Participate

Australia's economic restructuring and micro-economic reforms have generated a new wave of employee participation in organisational decision making. Employee participation is often used to introduce changes in organisations. It is also complimentary to new production strategies such as justin-time, continuous improvement, total quality management, and team-work. Central to the success of any form of voluntary employee participation program is the decision by employees to choose to join, and then continue their involvement, in a participative program. Employees do have an alternative, that is to not participate. This paper reports on recent research into the factors common to employees who choose to participate or not participate in one organisation's voluntary employee participation programs. In doing so it provides valuable insight for other organisations into the factors they may need to manage if they wish to achieve high levels of sustained participation by workers.