Finding a Voice at Work? Finding a Voice at Work? New Perspectives on Employment Relations Edited by Stewart Johnstone Peter Ackers 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OX26DP, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwide.Oxfordisaregisteredtrademarkof OxfordUniversityPressintheUKandincertainothercountries #OxfordUniversityPress2015 Themoralrightsoftheauthorshavebeenasserted FirstEditionpublishedin2015 Impression:1 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedin aretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,withoutthe priorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress,orasexpresslypermitted bylaw,bylicenceorundertermsagreedwiththeappropriatereprographics rightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproductionoutsidethescopeofthe aboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment,OxfordUniversityPress,atthe addressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisworkinanyotherform andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer PublishedintheUnitedStatesofAmericabyOxfordUniversityPress 198MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016,UnitedStatesofAmerica BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2014945599 ISBN 978–0–19–966800–7(Hbk.) ISBN 978–0–19–966801–4(Pbk.) Printedandboundby CPIGroup(UK)Ltd,Croydon,CR04YY LinkstothirdpartywebsitesareprovidedbyOxfordingoodfaithand forinformationonly.Oxforddisclaimsanyresponsibilityforthematerials containedinanythirdpartywebsitereferencedinthiswork. ToJayshree ToMoira n FOREWORD For all its ambiguities, voice can perhaps best be seen as the Holy Grail of employeerelations;itisthepromiseofaharmoniousandeffectiveemployment relationshipbuiltontrust,fairness,andrespect.Historically,voicewasviewed asameansforemployeestoinfluencetheirtermsandconditions,ortoexpress dissatisfaction with the employment relationship: ‘voice or exit’ (Hirschman 1970;Freeman and Medoff1984). Voice inthissensehadonly limitedappeal formanyemployers.Shiftingattitudesoccurredwhenemployeevoicewasseen tobekeytoemployeeinvolvementintheworkplace,andemployerscontinueto searchformoreeffectivewaysofreleasingemployeevoice.Case-studyresearch byMarchingtonetal.fortheCharteredInstituteofPersonnelandDevelopment (CIPD) in 2001 on Management Choice and Employee Voice found managers wereinlittledoubtthatvoicehadapositiveimpactonperformance,particularly through the number of ideas that emerged from employee feedback. CIPD Employee Outlook Surveys also confirm a relationship between employee engagement and the quality of top-down and bottom-up communications, and highlight the need for organizations to further improve communication inbothdirections(CIPD2013).Wheretheyarepersuadedthatengagementis theobjective,employersunderstandablywanttoknowwhatpracticalstepsthey can take to deliver it. Seen in this context, voice is essentially an empirical question regarding what actions by management, employees, and/or trade unions are best geared to releasing or promoting voice. This will depend in partonorganizationalhistoryandcontext. Whilethereisasignificantelementofcontinuityinmanagementinterestin employee voice in recent decades, organizations have certainly put more effort into getting messages out to employees. The major influence on the shape of voice mechanisms has been the changing institutional, industrial, technological,anddemographicenvironmenttowhichmanagershavehadto adapt. Despite the decline in collective bargaining and statutory support for consultation on a range of issues from health and safety to collective redun- dancies,formalconsultationprocesseshavecontinuedtobeused,particularly in the public sector. However, there is also an irony in that the sector that pioneered and continues to make most use of collective consultation—the public sector—is also the sector where employees are least likely to feel that their voiceisbeing heard,andleastsatisfiedwiththewaytheyaremanaged. Theoverallbalancehasshiftedtowardsmoredirectvoiceforms.Somekinds of voice initiative, including problem-solving groups, have declined in sig- nificancewhileothers,includingtheuseofemployeesurveys,haveincreased. viii FOREWORD The development of the ‘Engagefor Success’movement also suggeststhat releasing authentic employee voice, in the sense of a two-way dialogue, is attractingincreasedinterestbyemployers.Employeevoice,whetherexpressed through direct or indirect means, was identified in the initial report by the employee engagement task force (MacLeod and Clarke 2009) as one of the four key drivers of employee engagement. Although it is the least well understood of the four engagement drivers identified, employee voice can beseenastheingredientbuildingonandreinforcingtheotherthreedrivers— leadership,integrity,and linemanagement. Inother words, itisthe product of a workplace culture where people feel able to speak out with a degree of confidencethattheywillbeheardandnotpenalizedfordoingso.Forallthe criticism that repeated use of employee engagement surveys may become mechanical and add little value, well-designed surveys have the merit of focusing attention on the bottom line for employee engagement. Indeed, as contributors to this book suggest, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between the concepts of employee voice and engagement (CIPD2010). However,theWorkplaceEmploymentRelationsStudies(WERS)havecon- tinued to find no significant change in institutions for tapping into emp- loyee voice, with no expansion of workplace joint consultation machinery between2004and2011(Kersleyetal. 2006;van Wanrooyetal.2013).While anecdotal evidence suggests it is becoming increasingly difficult in many organizations to find people willing to serve as employee representatives on consultationbodies,thereisevidence(e.g.MarchingtonandKynighou2012) thatemployerinterestinpromotingemployeeinvolvementandparticipation, including direct forms of employee voice, is increasing. The findings of the WERS2011 survey also show amajorityof employees believe thatmanagers are either good or very good at seeking their views, though rather fewer believe that employers are good at responding to suggestions or allowing them to influence decisions (van Wanrooy etal. 2013). Possibly the least contested form of employee voice, and certainly less easy to monitor or measure than other forms of voice, is that identified by Marchington as ‘informal’ (Marchington and Suter 2013). This links closely with workplace cultureandhighperformanceworkingpractices,andwillreflectthedegreeto whichlinemanagersarewillingtoencouragefeedbackbyemployeesandtake action on their ideas. Informal voice will often rely on excellent working relationships between employees and front-line managers. These relation- shipsdonottypicallyrelyonformalvoicemechanismsandmaybeinfluenced as much by people with psychology or organization development back- groundsasbyemployeerelationsprofessionals. Thoughresearchsuggestsitisthecombinationofdirectandindirectforms ofvoicethathasthemostpositiveimpactonemployeeattitudes,fewBritish employers see collective forms of voice as critical to implementing strategies FOREWORD ix to increase employee engagement, preferring to focus on the exchange of information directly between managers and employees. Clearly, however, there can be a significant interaction between collective and individual formsofemployeevoice,whichcanbemutuallyreinforcing.Anunswerving focusonindividualattitudesmayleademployerstounderplaywiderfactors, suchasrestructuringorthedesignofpaysystems,thatcanhaveasignificant influence on attitudes across the workforce. In the absence of some form of employeerepresentation,employees’opinionsmaycomeacrosstomanagers as little more than background noise. Interestingly, with notable exceptions (e.g. Johnstone etal. 2010; Charlwood and Angrave 2014), the role of non- unionrepresentativesonjointconsultationbodieshasbeenrelativelyneglected bymainstreamacademicresearch.Inrecentyearsanumberofemployershave setupnewemployeeforumsinvolvingelectednon-unionrepresentatives,and a CIPD survey of employee relations in 2011 found that more than a third of employers with representative arrangements for informing and consulting with employees made use of non-union employee representatives (only), while two in five consulted with both union and non-union representatives (CIPD2011). Early conferences in the CIPD/LSE annual series on Voice and Value, initiated in 2000, were dominated by discussions of the EU directive on employeeinformationandconsultation.Amajorfocusofcontinuing public policy debate is whether further legislation is needed to drive increased take up of formal consultation, and there have been calls for the existing regula- tionstobestrengthened,possiblybyrequiringalowerthresholdofemployee support for consultation machinery to be established. However, a study by WarwickresearchersfortheDepartmentofBusinessandIndustryconfirmed therehasbeenlittletradeunioninterestinmakinguseofthelegislation(Hall etal. 2010), so in light of trade union ambivalence about the value of consultation processes, it seems unlikely such calls will be influential. Given the long-term mistrust that trade unions in the UK have displayed of the consultation process, it must be doubtful how much impact amending the legislation would have on their behaviour. The Warwick study also shows that, in order to be effective, consultation needs to have positive support by the employer. If remodelling the existing regulations was seen mainly as a vehicle for reviving trade union influence in the workplace, this would do littletoencourageemployerstoembraceitasameansofpromotingimproved business performance. But if voice is not simply about maintaining or increasing trade union influence in the workplace, what are its boundaries andhow isittobeidentified,measured,andsupported? Forexample, the treatment of whistleblowers offers an instructive test for the presence of employee voice. Do employees feel comfortable raising con- cerns about misbehaviour and wrongdoing in the workplace? Recent debate about whistleblowing has focused largely on seeking to strengthen the legal