The Voice Research Group is interested in all issues surrounding voice in the workplace. We highlight recent research publications by our group members, providing short summaries and practical points for business owners/managers and HR professionals.
Our research work is presented under four core themes:
(i) voice and silence during an economic crisis
(ii) determinants of voice in small and medium enterprises
(iii) voice in non-traditional employment
(iv) workers’ rights, collective bargaining and representation
Voice and silence during an economic crisis
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Summary: This study advances our understanding of horizontal solidarity behaviour, highlights the role of top-down employee communication as an effective human resource practice and delineates the role of employee voice in fostering workplace camaraderie in small and medium enterprises under crisis.
In practice: We encourage small business owners/managers and HR professionals to pay particular attention to top-down employee communications during an economic crisis. Having a clear plan of how to communicate task and performance information to employees will contribute towards an improved employee experience. This can have a positive impact on employee well-being and on organisational performance.
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Summary: This study investigates the relationship between adverse working conditions and employees’ organisational citizenship behaviour in small and medium enterprises operating under a severe economic crisis. It develops and tests a scale for measuring adverse working conditions and deciphers the extent to which such conditions relate to organisational and individual aspects of citizenship behaviour, considering job satisfaction’s mediating role.
In practice: We encourage small business owners/managers and HR professionals to demonstrate the ways in which organisational actions taken during a crisis period are mutually beneficial for employees. Small business owners/managers and HR professionals can also consider workplace redesign so as to further facilitate employee collaboration and camaraderie. By doing so, they are more likely to promote higher levels of employee solidarity, which may alleviate employee dissatisfaction with working conditions and optimise employee contribution towards organisational survival.
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Summary: This study develops a framework for understanding line managers’ experience of silence in economic crisis contexts and, within this framework, proposes cynical silence as a new type of silence relevant to such contexts.
In practice: In times of economic crisis, line managers in smaller enterprises can be inhibited in their role to act as intermediaries between their subordinates and senior managers/owners, and therefore, willingly or unwillingly, inhibit the expression of voice within their own teams. Line managers may adopt a pragmatic approach by trying to deal with the reality of the economic situation in the short-term, such as pressuring employees to work and perform and to avoid complains, but in the long-term, line managers may adopt a disengaged approach fueled by a lack of trust towards senior managers/owners.
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Summary: This study investigates how employee silence is formulated in long-term turbulent economic environments and in more vulnerable organisational settings like those of small enterprises. It suggests a new type of employee silence, social empathy silence, and offers a conceptual framework for understanding the development of silence over time in particular contexts of long-term turbulence and crisis.
In practice: In times of economic crisis, employees in small and medium enterprises may remain silent over issues that concern them due to a fear of the consequences, a response to the perceived duration of the crisis, or because they feel that this is the norm. The proposed framework on the evolution of employee silence over time in contexts of turbulence and crisis explains how employees may respond to uncertain conditions by withholding their voice in the workplace.
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Summary: This study investigates total reward practices in small and medium-sized enterprises in the South-Eastern European region and the reward elements positively affecting organisational performance. It finds that in times of economic crisis or transition, when HR budgets are limited, non-financial strategies (work-life balance; employee involvement voice mechanisms; organisational culture supporting personal and professional development) can be a viable alternative to costly financial rewards.
In practice: We encourage small business owners/managers and HR professionals to consider non-financial strategies as an alternative to costly financial rewards when budgets are limited. We found a positive correlation between organisational performance and work-life balance practices, employee involvement voice mechanisms and an organisational culture supporting personal and professional development. This means that these practices can be a viable solution for smaller enterprises operating in poor or declining economic conditions.
Determinants of voice in small and medium enterprises
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Summary: This study examines how employee voice in small and medium enterprises is shaped by national culture. Specifically, it examines the relationship between national culture and organisational norms and signals and explores the impact of such norms on employee voice behaviours.
In practice: Small business leaders and managers can reflect on and appreciate the complexities of national culture, and how these influence and shape voice behaviours in their organisations. The study suggests that organisations should develop greater ‘cultural intelligence’ through management development and education. Given that organisations do benefit from employee voice, the study strongly supports the need for smaller organisations to develop and encourage context appropriate voice systems. Our findings also highlight the particular, ‘voice-role’ of leaders in smaller enterprises, and demonstrate how leadership styles can inadvertently create voice-hostile organisations. The emphasis and focus must be on building a voice-positive organisational culture. This will involve acknowledging and challenging those aspects of national culture that deter, diminish and discourage employee voice behaviours.
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Summary: This study offers an analysis of voice determinants on voice behaviour specific to non-unionised small and medium enterprises from an international comparative employee perspective, presents these in an initial framework and explains how employees experience voice in small workplaces.
In practice: Our proposed initial framework can guide smaller enterprises in understanding the importance of the owner/manager in developing a voice culture within the organisation through engaging in participative management practices, as well as in capturing the importance of human resource management and voice systems in enabling employees to have avenues for voice. Our initial framework also helps small business owners/managers consider how the overall external environment and internal contingencies of the employment relationship may limit employees’ voice agency and behaviour. The consideration of such issues can enable small enterprises to adopt a more inclusive approach to voice in the workplace.
Voice in non-traditional employment
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Summary: This study expands the knowledge frontiers in the voice literature by conducting an integrative review of empirical studies that explore voice among workers in non-traditional employment relationships. It identifies the forms of voice available to non-traditional workers, the issues they are interested in voicing, how effective their voice is in influencing management decisions, determinants, and outcomes of their voice.
In practice: The integrative framework of voice in non-traditional employment relationships we offer covers individual, firm and external level determinants that shape voice of non-traditional workers. Such workers are in temporary employment, part-time employment, on-call/zero-hour, multi-party employment, and disguised employment or dependent self-employment. Our study highlights the need to consider all types of workers when designing and implementing voice systems in organisations.
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Summary: This study conceptualises the determining system factors that shape project workers’ voice in project-based organisations. It offers a conceptual framework based on a systematic review of peer-reviewed articles and contributes to employee voice theory as a vehicle for the study of voice in temporary employment relationships.
In practice: Voice in project-based organisations is important because it can stimulate project worker engagement and feedback and strengthen recruitment, innovation or improvement. This study offers a conceptualisation of the determinants that condition project worker voice, extends employee voice theory to the realm of temporary employment and defines the theoretical agenda for empirical research with a framework and propositions regarding project worker voice. Practitioners can use the conceptual framework offered to understand the internal and external factors that can accommodate or silence voice in these organisations, and consequently, use it to design appropriate interventions to strengthen project workers’ voice in these settings.
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Summary: This study highlights voids between what may be considered as mainstream HR practice when applied to standard employees compared to a spectrum of ‘non-standard’ workers. The implications for the role of HR in the implementation of Agile Working and in managing the worker experience are discussed and future avenues for this under-researched area are offered.
In practice: We offer a map of agile work contractual arrangements and the domain of authority/control for HR activities. This includes responsibility for employee voice and grievances. For permanent and fixed-term/temporary employees, line management with support from HR is responsible for this area. However, zero-hour workers and ‘self-employed’ (freelancers / eLancers) seem to fall outside the authority/control of HR. This is a problem for conventional HR theory for those workers who fall within this void, and is an existential problem for HR that now needs to re-consider its domain of authority/control to address the increasing variety of ‘workers’ in contemporary organisations.
Workers’ rights, collective bargaining and representation
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Summary: This study contributes to prior work by seeking to understand employee involvement and participation in decision-making in an understudied sample of Central and Eastern European countries and provides an insightful classification.
In practice: This study looked at how Central and Eastern European countries are classified according to employee attitude towards employee representation and employee involvement and participation in decision-making. We identified two clusters: Cluster one (Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, Poland, Slovenia, and FYROM) scored the lowest in positive employee attitude to employee representation and employee involvement and participation in decision-making, while cluster two (Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia) scored the highest in these areas. Positive employee attitude towards representation, such as valuing the work of employee representation, expressing an interest in the outcomes of consultations and negotiations, and active participation in opportunities for decision-making, do matter in both contexts; more so for cluster two.
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Summary: This study considers the resilience of a national-level initiative (Improving Working Lives) in the face of local-level initiative (Turnaround) in an NHS hospital and compare to Bach and Kessler’s (2012) model of public service employment relations. It finds that the imperatives of local financial priorities are privileged over those practices associated with staff well-being and work-life balance that were set as a consequence of national-level collective bargaining. The principles behind Improving Working Lives were almost entirely sacrificed in order to meet the financial objectives of Turnaround. This indicates the primacy of localised upstream performance management initiatives over the national-level downstream employee relations initiatives that form the basis of the NHS’s claim to model employer aspiration.
In practice: National-level jointly sponsored initiatives promoting mutual gains projects – exactly in the spirit of integrative bargaining – cannot be achieved if there is no local union sponsorship.
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Summary: This study investigates section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (MSA) under which large British companies are required to report on their efforts to monitor and protect the labour rights of their employees and workers on an annual basis. It devises a detailed index, based on (a) the mandatory and optional aspects of the Modern Slavery Act (2015, s. 54), (b) content recommended by CORE (2017) and (c) additional criteria based on consultation with The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, an internationally based labour rights NGO with an office in London. It focuses on 6 information categories. Apart from the General Information, which covers mostly mandatory disclosures, the remaining five categories were optional under section 54. These five categories are: Organisation and Structure of Supply chains, OS; Due Diligence, DD; Risk Assessment, RA; Codes of Conduct/Policies.
In practice: Unless there are concerted efforts and supports via public governance channels (for example, corporate governance regulatory codes, accounting standard setters and/or law makers), the Modern Slavery Act (2015, s. 54) is unlikely to serve one of its intended purposes, which is to raise transparency on supply chains and enhance corporate accountability to employees and labour. What is currently missing is a systematic approach to engagement with employees and labour organisations that independently represent labour and can help companies with their training programmes. In other words, unless public governance mechanisms formally recognise the need to systematically engage with civil society actors, there will not be meaningful changes that could result in shift in corporate culture and the Modern Slavery Act will be a used as no more than a tool for deflecting negative publicity and reputation damage.
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