Today, workers are often valued and more and more are regarded as an investment, rather than as a commodity to be traded or tossed aside. Employees and employers, alike, are concerned with fostering a good working environment. We hear terms like "job satisfaction." According to contemporary business practices, employees are becoming more involved. In fact, it is the principle argument of this paper that there is a direct correlation between the idea of job satisfaction and employee involvement. But how exactly does employee involvement and teamwork influence job satisfaction? First we must analyze the meaning of employee involvement and what it is to be a team. According to Steven L. McShane, author of Canadian Organizational Behaviour, employee involvement is "the degree to which employees share information, knowledge, rewards, and power throughout the organization."# Robbins defines a work team as one which generates positive synergy through coordinated effort."# Team effectiveness, benefits, and consequences all played a key role in why Hart Associates# was so successful, and they are accorded a degree of consideration in the following pages. By examining these factors, one will understand how employee involvement and team work allows for positive outcomes in a company.
Despite the surge in popularity and promotion of teamwork throughout the education system and the private sector, being on a team is not always beneficial or productive. Robbins suggests that teams " often suffer from infighting over assignments and decision outcomes, low participation rates, and member apathy." # If workers feel that their input to a particular project is not significant, they might lose interest and deliberately shy away from any sort of group role. Hart Associates recognized this and created a way for each employee's voice to be heard, and that the outcome was to their benefit. They allowed each employee access to a health benefit orientation and provided them with health care card representatives to inform them of all the different health care card providers.
