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Employee Voice

Employee voice is an employee’s involvement in the decision making of an organisation. It is also referred to as employee participation. There are various reasons to encourage employee voice in the organisation. They are: 1.	Human relations – a sense of employee worth and recognition of their involvement in the organisation 2.	Power sharing – which was encouraged by Mary Parker Follett, who believes that power should be “with” and not “over” employees Wren (1979, 324) 3.	Organisational efficiency – the employees are usually the experts at their own individual job and therefore would know how possible decisions would effect the way they do their job, therefore it would be advantageous for the employer to involve the “experts” in the decision making process. 4.	Gain employee cooperation – it has been proven in research that employees who are involved in the decision making process are much more likely to embrace the decision in which they were involved in making.

There are a variety of different ways in which employee voice can be seen in an organisation. There are both formal and informal means of employee voice.

Informal means of employee voice include: -	Regular social functions where employees are able to communicate in an open way to people of all levels of the organisation -	Manager’s daily walk around the work environment where they can speak to individual workers and hear the opinions of a variety of different employees in different positions. -	Email is a new type of employee voice in which has developed with new technology. Email is able to break through authority barriers and allow employees a direct means of communication to people who are higher in the hierarchy of command. The informal means of employee participation is a pluralist frame as it involves two parties communicating with one another.

Formal means of employee voice include: -	Staff surveys which allow HR departments to gather information from the employees over a variety of different issues -	Suggestion boxes are also a formal means of employee participation as it is only a one sided means of communication. The formal means of employee voice is a unitary frame as it is one sided – usually from the employee.

Employee participation can reduce industrial relations issues like strikes and sabotage as employees feel more involved in the organisation and its decision making. Employees are more likely to embrace any changes being made within the organisation and encourage loyalty within the organisation.

Germany is one country that encourages employee participation to a high degree. They have 50% representation of their Supervisory Boards as workers from the organisation.

REFERENCES Dowling, P, Festing, M and Engle, A (2008), Fifth Edition, International Human Resource Management: Managing People in a Multinational Context, Thomson, South Melbourne

Timming, A (2007), European Work Councils and the dark side of managing worker voice, Human Resource Management Journal, 17 (3), 248-254

Wren, D (1979) The Evolution of Management Thought, 2nd edition, John Wiley & Sons, USA.