Encouraging participation and involvement

Why is participation good for productivity and mental health?

Participation relates to involving people in decision making in the workplace—on organisation-wide issues, team issues or matters affecting their immediate job. Benefits include improved performance, innovation and learning, as well as worker wellbeing. Importantly, organisations are legally required to involve workers in consultation on some issues, such as work health and safety.  

‘High involvement’ workplaces prioritise worker autonomy, facilitate workers to have a ‘voice’, promote learning and develop job quality. These practices increase job control, which positively affects mental health. Low job control is a recognised psychosocial hazard under work health and safety legislation.

Promoting participation and involvement in decision making and allowing people to choose how and when to complete their tasks get completed supports worker wellbeing.

How you can promote participation

Here are some ways you can promote participation and involvement in your organisation:

• Establish problem-solving groups that involve and empower people to take part.
• Create project teams or quality circles. Workers work together on tasks with considerable responsibility delegated to the team level.
• Introduce suggestion schemes, giving workers channels to contribute new ideas.
• Consult and meet with workers and encourage them to share ideas.
• Authorise (and therefore trust) workers to make decisions for themselves in some situations.
• Implement multi-channel structured decision making processes that foster communications upwards, sideways and in other directions within the organisation.
• Practise industrial democracy via representative participation, including co-determination and shared governance.

How you can put participation into practice

Here are some things to consider when aiming to increase participation and involvement:

• Discuss the notion of ‘worker voice’. That is, workers ‘have a say’ over work activities and decisions.
• Understand contributing to decision making and making suggestions is less risky and more comfortable when there is an established climate of psychological safety. That is, make it safe to speak up. 
• Consider people’s preferences and the type of work they are doing. People have different levels of ability and accessibility. If they welcome additional decision authority, gradually increase involvement expectations over time. You might start with small increases in control e.g. input into shift-schedules/task allocation/problem solving.
• Consider any extra responsibility/accountability, higher demands, etc. when providing more decision making authority.
• Think about people’s cultural backgrounds, particularly if they are from countries where democratic participation is not the norm. You may need to build some people’s skills to prepare them for greater involvement.
• Consider job crafting (a high involvement practice at the job level) when participation already works well.