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Employee participation is defined as a process of employee involvement designed to provide employees with the opportunity to influence and where appropriate, take part in decision making on matters which affect them in the context of their employment. Employee participation is part of a process of empowerment in the workplace. Empowerment involves decentralising power within the organisation to individual decision makers further down the line. Team working is a key part of the empowerment process and team members are encouraged to make decisions for themselves.

Examples of employee participation include:
i. quality circles or project groups in which employees work on projects where considerable responsibility is delegated to the team. You often see this in industrial manufacturing companies for assembling products ie. cars.

ii. Suggestion system - where employees are given channels to provide suggestions or new ideas to managers within the organisation.

iii. Team meetings or town halls where employees are encouraged to share ideas freely without retribution from management. iv. Delegation of responsibility within the organisation. In modern organisations the entry level employees need to be given considerable responsibility because they are often the face of the company. Their direct contact with customers on a day-to-day basis is where many customers form their image and opinion of a company. Furthermore, these employees feedback are often critical to refining or abolishing processes with respect to corporate strategy based on their personal observations at the front line.

v. Multi-channel decision making processes. In such situations decisions are not only made in a downward direction, they also result from communications upwards, sideways, and in many other directions within the organisation.

One of the critical elements of