Employee Voice
Managing the Changing Employment Relationship
Consider the different methods used to give effective voice to employees and critically evaluate the importance of this to the employment relationship
Due Date: 14/01/2011
Word Count: 3216
The development of the different methods used to engage ‘employee voice’ strongly coincides with the timeline that businesses have endured through in the present/ twentieth century. In the UK in particular, the methods implemented could be correlated to the economic and political climate of the country at that moment in time.
This essay will look at various methods that have been used in the historical and modern context to give employees ‘voice’ which include Voluntarism, Trade Unions (TU’s) and their decline, the Psychological Contract, European Works Councils and Joint Consultation Committees (JCC’s), Informing and Consulting Directive (ICE 2004) and the High Performance Workplace.
First it is important to look at definitions of voice and why it is so important to the employment relationship. An older definition of employee voice is by Hirschman (1970), who states the idea of employee voice being a form of active dissent due to dissatisfaction. This applies rather well at the time this particular academic was writing, as the political and economic climate of the UK at the time was not the most stable. Research has expanded and built on from this, and a definition that is more applicable to modern day employee voice would be “a whole variety of processes and structures which enable, and at times empower, employees directly and indirectly, to contribute to decision-making” (Boxall and Purcell, 2003:162). This definition implies that the ‘stronger’ the voice of employees, the more efficient and productive they will be in the workplace. The employment relationship at the beginning however was not quite as communicative and well recognised.
Voluntarism was the first approach used by the Governments ‘the absence of
Consider the different methods used to give effective voice to employees and critically evaluate the importance of this to the employment relationship
Due Date: 14/01/2011
Word Count: 3216
The development of the different methods used to engage ‘employee voice’ strongly coincides with the timeline that businesses have endured through in the present/ twentieth century. In the UK in particular, the methods implemented could be correlated to the economic and political climate of the country at that moment in time.
This essay will look at various methods that have been used in the historical and modern context to give employees ‘voice’ which include Voluntarism, Trade Unions (TU’s) and their decline, the Psychological Contract, European Works Councils and Joint Consultation Committees (JCC’s), Informing and Consulting Directive (ICE 2004) and the High Performance Workplace.
First it is important to look at definitions of voice and why it is so important to the employment relationship. An older definition of employee voice is by Hirschman (1970), who states the idea of employee voice being a form of active dissent due to dissatisfaction. This applies rather well at the time this particular academic was writing, as the political and economic climate of the UK at the time was not the most stable. Research has expanded and built on from this, and a definition that is more applicable to modern day employee voice would be “a whole variety of processes and structures which enable, and at times empower, employees directly and indirectly, to contribute to decision-making” (Boxall and Purcell, 2003:162). This definition implies that the ‘stronger’ the voice of employees, the more efficient and productive they will be in the workplace. The employment relationship at the beginning however was not quite as communicative and well recognised.
Voluntarism was the first approach used by the Governments ‘the absence of
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