Are employers really listening to their staff? And how can HR contribute? Mike Emmott, CIPD adviser on employee relations, examines the results of the latest CIPD-sponsored study into employee voice
Companies are increasingly rating the views of their employees as a critical business issue and managers are adopting mechanisms for listening to what their staff have to say not because they are forced to, but because it seems essential if they are to meet business objectives.
This is one of the key messages to emerge from a recent series of in-depth interviews with senior HR and line managers in 18 organisations, mostly in the private sector. The research, conducted by a team led by Mick Marchington of Umist, was commissioned by the CIPD. It builds on a survey that he conducted a decade ago into what he then called involvement but now calls employee voice.
One finding that is perhaps surprising this time round is that collective forms of employee voice have gained a new lease of life. This is despite the fact that managers are now less inclined to see unions as the main channel of communication, and that far fewer now view employee voice in terms of collective representation. Most interviewees saw the phrase as an alternative to words such as consultation, communication and say. They clearly understood voice as implying some form of two-way dialogue enabling staff to influence what happened at work. One HR manager suggested that his firm's approach was designed in such a way that all employees can represent their views to management, rather than being just the other way round.
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