Direct and indirect employee involvement strategies in MNEs in Australia

This paper draws on evidence from a large scale survey of employment practices of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) in Australia. It explores first, the incidence of and their approach to employee involvement strategies and second, factors that influence the use of these strategies. The findings are that MNEs in Australia are wide users of a range of employee involvement practices. These include direct participatory practices such as employee management meetings and communication strategies such as newsletters use of email and the intranet. To a lesser extent they also utilise indirect channels such as joint consultation committees. Employee involvement strategy is influenced by trade union presence, company strategic human resource management (SHRM) orientation and country of origin. In particular UK MNEs are actively utilising a range of direct and indirect approaches.