[Switch to the current edition of Connection »]

Are You Listening?

Employee Voice

Everyone wants their voices heard and their opinions valued, but the question is – are you listening?

According to a study by Krauthammer, a leading training and coaching company, 82% of employees would like their managers to listen to their ideas, but only 56% actually experience this.

Many successful UK managers are adopting a participative management style which gives their employees the facility to share their ideas, air their views and even contribute towards decision making. Known as Employee Involvement (EI) in the HR arena, some common benefits include; increased efficiency, enhanced competitiveness, and improved employee relations. So why aren’t all businesses using this approach?

Research by Prof Mick Marchington highlights how managers are much more convinced than they were a decade ago that involvement produces business benefits. However, there’s still some skepticism about whether it just simply ‘opens a can of worms’ and takes control away from managers – especially when decision making.

Letting go of these misconceptions and taking account of employee voice can help pave the way for improved employee engagement and innovation. The Institute of Employment Studies (IES) has outlined that the main driver of engagement is a sense of feeling valued and involved. Interestingly, involvement techniques were in use as far back as in Medieval times, when guilds were set up to regulate craft production – serving the interests of both workers and masters. Members would work together to ensure that craft pieces were up to standard and sold at fair price, and would even look after members that fall ill. In effect, guilds led the way for the formation of trade unions and employee forums.

Under the Information and Consultation of Employees (ICE) Regulations, businesses with 50 or more employees must provide, once requested by the employee, an information and consultation agreement – which basically gives both parties the opportunity to express views and ideas. Although these regulations do not stipulate what matters the employer must agree to inform and consult on, it’s likely that employees are going to want an agreement that will cover issues such as pay and conditions, decisions that may result in redundancies, re-structuring or change of working conditions.

In recent years, employee forums have played an increasingly important role in providing people with a voice in the workplace, whilst allowing businesses to fulfill their Information and Consultation agreement as laid down by the ICE regulations.

Setting up an Employee Forum

In order to get a fair and realistic voice of your workforce, you’ll need to ensure that a representative from each operation within your business is selected. If a representative cannot attend due to illness or whatever reason, then they must catch up with the Chair Person at the earliest opportunity, to talk through what was discussed so it can be relayed back to constituents. Also, the minutes from the meeting must also be available for both the Reps and the colleagues to read. Finally, it’s important that all representatives support outspoken staff, and importantly, respect the highly confidential nature of the topics being discussed.

Give your employees the tools to voice their opinions is a constructive way and you’ll have a breadth of valuable information at your fingertips, that’ll not only help you to increase employee engagement, but also increase productivity and innovation across all bases in your business.