Importance of Employee Participation in Implementation of Operations Strategy

Recent studies have shown that support and performance of the employees are a major contributing factor to the successful implementation of an operations strategy in order to have a long term impact on the organization (CHRM, n.d.).

It is important to involve employees at all levels right from the beginning of implementing a new strategy so that they familiarize themselves with the new change and not be resistant towards it. It is important that they understand the strategy well in order to play it well (Jacqueline and Lynn, n.d.). To achieve this, many organizations have introduced a concept called "learning organizations". A learning organization is an organization that learns and encourages learning among its people. It promotes exchange of information between employees hence creating a more knowledgable workforce (Karash, n.d.).

The International Organization for Standardization states that people at all levels are the essence of an organization and their full involvement enables their abilities to be used for the organization's benefit (Tigani, 2012). He further says that it is difficult to deny that the success of an organization depends largely on the involvement of its people.

It is said that employees are the backbone of the organization and a good selection of people in an organization affects the organizations image, brand, levels of service and quality of products and ultimately customer satisfaction. (B2B International, 2010).

Every level of an operations strategy, from the implementation of business drivers to its final development of the product / service and consequently, its monitoring its customers requires technically skilled and qualified employees. The Human resources department of any organization is responsible for monitoring the welfare and satisfaction of its employees. Effective human resource management (HRM) helps the organization's operations strategy to be implemented effectively and help the organization to gain competitive advantage (Hassin, n.d.).

Tigani (2012) believes that following are the benefits to involving employees in operations:

Customer focus

Leadership

Process approach

Continual improvement

Factual approach to decision making

Mutually beneficial customer supplier relationships.

Conclusion:

The people in an organization are one of the most important strategic resources the HRM is responsible for an organization's competitive advantage. They set and implement operations strategies (Scott Jackson et al., 2011). It enables efficient stakeholder relations which results in better implementation of