Over the last three years, a team at Strathclyde Business School has completed a major research project on employee voice funded as part of the ESRC Transforming Working Lives programme (2022-2025). The project brought together a team of Strathclyde researchers, as well as external partners including the IPA, CIPD, and representatives of unions, government, employers and civil society organisations.
The study asked several questions:
- Do workers feel informed about what is going on at work?
- Do they feel they have the means to express themselves?
- Can they influence decision making?
- Have new opportunities for voice emerged?
- Do workers value voice opportunities?
- What factors influence whether speak up about issues?
To help answer these questions, the research team conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with workers in west of Scotland, alongside analysis of quantitative data, including from nationally representative surveys of employees.
Conducting over 200 qualitative interviews enabled the team to develop detailed employer case studies across a range of sectors including retail, hospitality, social care, and a local authority. This allowed comparisons to be made across a range of different settings (union/non-union, large/small, public/private) and types of worker. This included managers, employee representatives and frontline workers.
Key findings included:
- Workers revealed that despite voice opportunities varying by organisation and sector – ranging from union representation and employee surveys to open door policies and informal interactions – they generally felt informed about what was going on, and also that they could make their views known.
- A common concern, however, was that even when they were able to express themselves and felt genuinely listened to, they were less confident that their views would make a difference to some matters. This was especially apparent in relation to key employment relations issues such as pay, working conditions and job security.
- A feeling that their views would not make a difference was one of the main reasons workers gave as to why they might choose not to raise concerns or make suggestions at work (others included not wanting to cause trouble or to be seen to complain).
To test the broader generalisability of our interview findings, the team conducted a representative survey of Scottish workers. This was built on the work that the CIPD had developed (the UK Working Lives Survey, a nationally representative survey of job quality). Key findings from this analysis were:
- The majority of workers reported various voice opportunities, with direct mechanisms such as meetings and employee surveys and informal interactions with managers the most common, especially outside the public sector.
- While the majority of workers thought conversations with managers, team meetings and trade unions were effective, a minority thought employee surveys or HR were effective.
- The vast majority of respondents agreed that unions can make a difference to workers today, and most union members believed that their union is effective at representing members.
- Interestingly, a majority of workers in non-union workplaces also said they would vote for a union if an election was held tomorrow.
In short, while a combination of direct and informal voice mechanisms were present in most workplaces, and were found to be valued by employees, a large unmet demand for collective union representation remained.
The limits of direct and informal voice are also evident in our qualitative data. For example, in the largely non-union outsourced private social care sector, workers mainly expressed their views and raised issues through ad hoc phone communication with their manager or at scheduled supervision meetings. Some employers in the sector had introduced in-house non-union employee representation forums, partly in response to the evolving regulatory agenda, but their effectiveness in addressing pressing concerns such as pay, work intensity, insecurity and working time was questioned.
One reading of our data is that, while direct and informal channels have value, they are not well-suited to addressing the types of issues employees felt they have limited influence over, such as pay and working conditions. The appetite for union representation leads us to question the effectiveness of current voice practices, and suggests that a combination of individual and collective voice channels appears to be desired by most workers.
These findings from Scotland are important for employers committed to developing effective voice arrangements, and are particularly timely in the context of the UK Government’s Make Work Pay plan, the Employment Rights Act, and the Scottish Government’s Fair Work Agenda.
This project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council ES/W009951/1.
For more information about the project or findings contact [email protected]