Internal participation is one of the principles and values ​​expressed in the strategic foundations of many organizations in our environment and / or among their “core competencies”. As a core and instrumental value, it serves to positively influence other goals, such as innovation, talent attraction and loyalty, business sustainability, healthy business ... From a people's perspective, participation in work is a desire to align with the political and social democratization of the environment.

There are several areas of decision-making that allow individuals and / or groups in an organization to participate, accepting the distinction between management participation, results, and ownership. Of the above, management is the most indirect to any organization (legal nature, sector, size). Recent research has also shown that the most significant way of participation is linked to indicators of people's well-being (Uribetxeberria and Elorza, 2018: The impact of participation on the well-being and economic sustainability of people in organizations).
Therefore, some notes on this way of participating in this article will be highlighted.

Participate in management

What, however, is behind this relatively generic expression of management participation?
In order to provide concreteness, we propose the following sub-dimensions:

• Activity organization: about activities and work operations (tasks, working methods, control elements, time, resources, etc.)
• Socio-labor policies: refers to the basic dialogue necessary to establish social and labor policies and rules that regulate working conditions (working hours and leave, work health, equality and work-life balance, professional development, employment and employment consolidation) (pay, social assistance and etc.).
• Business project: company definition and expansion, and business strategy and value building.

Steps

Which wires will allow us to weave that participation?

We see that organizations often take the path of intuitively encouraging participation in do-learn-do-learn processes. However, in contexts like the current one, companies are forced to rationalize resources and resort to strategies.

• Some of the elements that allow progress to be made at the level of participation may be:
• Leadership: from executive management to more shared leadership (facilitator, cooperative, creator of new leadership). The main source of cultural construction ...
• Strategic management and dissemination: promotes understanding, involvement and commitment to the organization’s strategic project.
• Internal communication: allows the organization's resources to be integrated with the environment and to function in a coordinated way in a harmonious and positive way.
• Ability and attitudes of the person: promotes variability and empowerment: training becomes a key function.
• Teamwork: allows the use of synergistic knowledge as much as possible and the extension / raising of decision-making power to the source of the activity.
• Recognition: the company's value proposition for the person configured by the systems and attributes, such as: professional development, compensation, social benefits, distribution according to results or participation in capital, reconciling professional and personal life ...

Components of participation

It should be noted that there is no single Participation approach that can be applied to all types of organizations. Each organization, depending on its starting point and how far it wants to go, must make its own roadmap and provide the necessary doses of each of the indicated ingredients.

Thus, it can be seen that the experience and level of progress in the field of participation in companies have a direct impact on the priority and choice of components to be developed at all times:
In the case of companies with prior experience in developing and promoting participation, “leadership” and “strategic direction and dissemination of objectives” are identified as critical components.
In contrast, companies that are sensitive to this issue but do not have significant experience or progress in the field of participation are committed to focusing on the components of “teamwork” and “internal communication”.

In this regard, a preliminary diagnosis of the level of development of the components described would allow us to identify the starting point and its roots in the culture of the organization. It can provide clues about the evolution to be considered for each component and the possible brakes we can find. Experience in project development in different companies and organizations can add value by providing coherence to participatory projects and starting from a fully interdisciplinary perspective, adapting the pace and development of each component to real needs and challenges. are presented.

Furthermore, it should be borne in mind that the implementation of participatory plans or models should not be seen as a way of looking for short-term results, but as a change for new behaviors; so it needs continuity and time, for its results are obtained in the medium and long term; and cultural change will only be possible through the explicit commitment of management.