Importance Of Employee Involvement In Change Management

INTRODUCTION Employee participation is a process of involving employees in important decision-making within the workplace (Noah, 2008). Keith (1981) defines “employee participation as the mental and emotional involvement of employees in a group or organizational situations that encourage them to contribute to the group’s or organization’s goals and to share responsibility”. Employee involvement is a “heightened emotional and intellectual connection”, that employees have for their job, organization, manager, or fellow-workers thus influencing them to apply additional discretionary effort in their work (Gibbons, 2006).1.0 Why Employees Involvement is Important in achieving Effective Change Management

Change causes uncertainty, stress, and

Strebel (1996) indicates that employees should adapt their ongoing behaviors and attitudes to align with the desired outcomes of the changes as they are responsible for effecting changes, aligned with success as they carry out the necessary activities differently in order to achieve organizational strategic goals. If the employees do not feel as part of the changes, the changes will not be successful; it is the obligation of executives to set employees up for success but most important is that employees need to understand why change is

According to Smith (2005) there are three steps for achieving organisational change readiness: creating a sense of need and urgency to “change communicating the change message” and to ensure