From Susan M. Heathfield,
Your Guide to Human Resources.
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How to recruit, retain, reward, and motivate staff regularly tops your interest list. Doing these well is the most important strategic role of the manager or the Human Resources professional. In what other capacity can you contribute more to the success of your organization than in encouraging employee involvement and employee engagement? Employee involvement and employee engagement matter to your organization's success.

In The New Pioneers: The Men and Women Who are Transforming the Workplace and the Marketplace (compare prices), Thomas Petzinger, Jr., discusses the pieces of a powerful revolution currently reshaping the face of American business. I'd like to see HR professionals leading the charge on these.

Petzinger, the long time writer of the Wall Street Journal column, The Front Lines, draws his conclusions from corporate case studies of companies in more than forty cities in thirty states and worldwide. I will highlight some of his most important conclusions. The highlighted workplaces demonstrate environments in which motivated people choose to work.

Employee Involvement Lives

"Being good in business calls on being good at being human," Petzinger concludes after studying the turnaround of Rowe Furniture Company. Rowe, which had been a very traditional manufacturing company, identified the need to utilize the brains and talent of its employees. Charlene Pedrolie, its manufacturing chief, truly believed that the people doing the work should design how the work is done.

With the assistance and consultation from a much reduced management team and engineers, workers redesigned their work. They moved from an environment in which each person handled part of a work process to fully cross-trained manufacturing cells producing a whole product.

From standing at an assembly position all day long, they created work which allowed some freedom and movement. They eliminated the formerly "deadly dull" jobs. At the same time, the flow of information they received, which allowed them to know exactly how they were performing, increased dramatically.

The new sense of personal control, according to Petzinger, "bred a culture of innovation in every corner of the plant... It reveals the creative power of human interaction.

It suggests that efficiency is intrinsic; that people are naturally productive; that when inspired with vision, equipped with the right tools, and guided by information about their performance, people will build on each other's actions to a more efficient result than any single brain could design."

Tap Staff Potential Through Employee Involvement

In his company research, Petzinger found important and consistent themes relating to vision, employee involvement, control, measurement of work processes, simplicity, communication, fun and energizing environments, excellent work tools and training, and commitment. If you can create these in your organization, you'll retain your committed, motivated employees.

• At HalfPrice books, Pat Anderson, the late founder, recognized the importance of having not just a big vision, but one that benefits society. People are energized by feeling as if they are part of something bigger than themselves. She also believed that day-to-day management was about tracking information not controlling people. She also encouraged a sense of play at work, realizing it was good for the business.

  Teams for Employee Involvement in Continuous Improvement

• At Monarch Marking Systems, Jerry Schlaegel and Steve Schneider had a deep respect for the minds of their workers. When confronted with a workplace in which people had been paid not to think, they instituted a "small set of simple rules" to break that mindset.

  They required people to participate on teams that were formed specifically to improve a particular performance numeric. Teams were allowed no more than thirty days to form the team, study a problem or opportunity, and implement a solution. Perhaps a bit heavy-handed to start, the success of over 100 teams has created a new culture within the organization.

These companies are successful because their employees thrive. Here are more companies that thrive because of successful employee involvement and engagement.