Communication and Involvement [week 25]
Employee involvement is when employees are included in all issues of their interest. It is therefore both individual, and direct. It includes every other member who is involved  in the organisatio. It is led by management with individual employees, getting included and subsumed to achieve some specific goal. It  assumes common interest between employees and management. Its main function is to grow employee identification and commitment.

On the other hand, employee participation unlike involvement, is collective. It is an act of sharing in something.It is therefore joining with others in every activity that matters. It involves taking part in something, and is more or less often supported by some rule or, legislation. Where employment rights matter for example, participation is excercised. employees play a central roles in shaping their own lives and lifestyles, with each employee becoming their own representative or being part of a trade union.
 
Staff should be involved in decision making as this will give their opinion more importance within the organisation. It may be small decision and they may not even be put into practise if they are not possible but employees should still be given the chance to put foward their opinion and ideas. In my experience it can be very de-motivating for higher management to take over in all the decision making process as employees have good valuable ideas that can increase productivity. Also employees who deal with customers on a day to day basis know exactly what the customer required so the knowlede they have on this matter should be treated with more importance.
 
Im my opinion staff should have a say in opening times, rotas, merchandising, products/ services etc. As they are the ones who get direct customer feedback. They are more likely to know what the customer wants and when they want it.
 
Social networking
Facebook, MySpace etc are hugely popular with millions of people around the world using them to communicate with friends. But these services offer real opportunities for business looking to grow more successfuly.

There are benefits of social netwoking at work such as:
Staff can get to know each other better and therefore work closer as a team
Staff can share information and learn of each other
Lower Costs- It is cheaper to employ online social networking strategies than to pay for advertising. companies have adopted social networking tools in the need to locate expertise within companies whose employees are dispersed across many locations.
Insight into customers- when you social network, you can prescreen potential customers. You learn what your prospects like and what they don't. That personal relationship you gain when you connect with your potential customer is more valuable than what you would get had you advertised.
A wider range of people can be reached whether it be employees or customers

There are also drawbacks of social networking such as:
Staff knowing too much about each other, could lead to conflict or singling individuals.
Competitors may have access to to much information about the company they could use to compete
If anything negative happens within the company they could get bad press and which may ruin their image
Staff may post negative comments about the company that others will see, this could damage the companies image and other potential candidates may not want to work for a company after reading negative comments. 

IBM is an example of an organisation that uses social networking sites to find expertise. They say “It is fundamentally important to us both in terms of our efficiency and our competitive advantage in the marketplace.” They where unable to find people within the organisation so used social netwoking to help them find the right people for their company. It is also a way for them to research a particular person or subject area, the searcher gets a good overview of how someone describes themselves and how they are defined by others, and by their own actions and interests.

References
http://www.cio.co.uk/article/706/social-networking-stands-to-benefit-businesses/?pn=2 By Suw Charman-Anderson  Published: 11 August 08