Professor Stephen Wood to present research highlighting the importance of employee involvement

The School of Management’s Stephen Wood, Professor of Management, will be speaking at a UKWON symposium on Bringing wellbeing, mental health and productivity together in the workplace of the future at E.ON’s headquarters in Nottingham on 8 October, where he will stress that employee involvement is a neglected solution in discussions of Britain’s productivity problem.

He will be reporting his own research, which along with US evidence, shows there is strong evidence that direct employee involvement can have beneficial effects for organisational performance. Particularly important is good job design which gives employees’ discretion over key aspects of their jobs; his research discovered that the effects this has on job satisfaction explains much of its link to organisational performance.

Other organisational forms of involvement, such as team working, idea capturing schemes, problem-solving groups and information sharing, have a similar positive effect on performance but this is not explained by their enhancing employees’ satisfaction or well-being.  This implies it is more to do with the way that organisational involvement increases shared understandings, individual and group creativity and collaboration across the organisation.

UK WON is a not-for-profit organisation that works with employers’ and professional bodies, trade unions, universities, policy makers and others committed to developing and disseminating new ways of organising work that lead to sustainable competitiveness, an innovative culture and a high quality of working life.