A current trend appears to see large organisations not placing as much importance on the employee voice. Up until recently, employees appeared to be encouraged to speak up at work, but the actions of large corporations seem to go against this message. Professor Rea Prouska from Hult International Business School explores why this is changing and explains the benefits of the employee voice.
At a time when research on inclusive leadership and employee voice is gaining momentum, it is disheartening to read about global corporations making a U-turn in their approach to employee voice at work. Recent stories in the press seem to indicate a cultural shift in traditional hierarchies in tech companies especially, contradicting messages of the recent past such as ‘bringing your whole self to work’, ‘leaning in’ and ‘radical candour’, all of which indicated that employees were encouraged to speak up at work.
A recent Netflix culture memo featuring on the company’s jobs webpage included the phrase ‘not all opinions are created equal’. This is a stark contradiction with the company’s first culture memo in 2009, which called for employees to ‘question actions inconsistent with our values’. Similarly in Tesla, Elon Musk’s memo advising employees: “You can talk to your manager’s manager without his permission, you can talk directly to a VP in another dept, you can talk to me,” turned sour when employees started reporting a culture of fear, with some blaming their firing on their efforts to organise a union. At Google, messages like ‘bringing your whole self to work’ were undermined when employees were urged to leave the political part of their selves at home, and 50 workers were fired following sit-in protests over the company’s contract with the Israeli government.
Overall, global corporations, which once appeared transformative in the way they managed people in a bid to attract and retain talent, seem to prefer their employees to keep their mouths shut now that they have matured. Reading such stories in the press, one wonders, what has gone wrong?
The benefits of employee voice
The many benefits of employee voice have been established for decades. Employee voice is about enabling employees to share ideas that contribute to improving the firm’s productivity, work organisation and quality of work, through employee involvement in decision-making. But it is also about providing employees with opportunities to share any concerns or dissatisfaction that they have over work issues, either individually or collectively, in a bid to rectify issues and prevent deterioration in relations.
The premise of employee voice is that it benefits both organisations and employees. The benefits for organisations have been widely reported and include increased profitability, productivity, innovation and efficiency. For employees, voice is integral to their engagement and wellbeing and is an indicator of good work. But there is also a moral case to be made for employee voice. It is simply the ‘right thing to do’, as the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the UK’s HR professional body articulates. Voice is important ‘not just for organisational effectiveness, but also by way of offering dignity and respect to workers’, it says.
Why then does it seem that global corporations no longer value the business and moral case for offering employees a voice? The most likely answer is not that they underestimate the importance of employee voice, but that as these global corporations have grown in size and complexity their current voice channels (and in particular the way they devolve responsibility for fostering employee voice to line managers) have become inadequate.
The role of line managers
For employee voice to be effectively enabled, there must be a strong alignment between the best practices outlined by the company’s HR department and the way line managers implement these practices.
What is critical here is that line managers are often not properly trained in HR issues, including in employee voice. A 2023 research study in the UK carried out by the Chartered Management Institute in partnership with YouGov indicated that there is a widespread concern about the quality of management and its impact on workers’ daily lives. The study found that 82% of those entering management positions have not had any formal management training.
This creates a situation where organisations end up being staffed by many ‘accidental managers’. It is no wonder, therefore, that employees are left vulnerable to toxic or abusive managers, or to managers who may have good intentions but who just don’t know how to manage people. Lessons from smaller firms can be valuable here. Recent research indicated the role of trust and respect towards the boss in creating a positive voice climate in the organisation. Larger corporations, therefore, need to work hard to replicate this through the numerous line managers they employ and who are responsible for fostering voice within their teams.
These line managers also need to be continuously monitored with respect to how they are delivering their people objectives. Global corporations have sophisticated HR functions, and with the drive towards HR analytics, it would be unlikely that there are any corporations out there unable to provide workforce insights to each manager on issues such as engagement, labour turnover, grievances and sickness absence. Putting this information in their hands would not only help them improve their practice but would also ensure they are held accountable when their people objectives are not met.
A joint responsibility
Beyond organisational inadequacies in managing voice, one can also see how the statement ‘bringing your true self to work’ may have been misunderstood by employees. Many employees have taken this to mean that they have carte blanche to express themselves when they wish and how they wish. Yet, this is not what employee voice is about. Having the right, and being actively encouraged by your employer, to voice ideas or concerns at work does not mean that you can do this without any boundaries in the content, manner and timing of your expression. In fact, the many individual and collective voice avenues that exist do exactly that; they set the form and agenda of communication.
What employees need to recognise is that the workplace is a professional setting with clear boundaries around expected behaviours that the organisation itself sets. Most organisations also have processes in place (such as performance management or disciplinary and grievance procedures) to deal with any unwanted behaviours. These rules of conduct are something to which employees legally agree, whether explicitly stipulated or not, when they sign their employment contract. Such rules also apply to the way employees choose to amplify their voice at work.
Responsibility for effective expression of voice at work is something that must be shared by both global corporations and their employees. Getting it right is important – but it is a two-way street.
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