25th January 2012
The Voice Project
What is employee voice?
Voice is the two-way communication between the employer and employee within the work place. As both parties have an interest in the company succeeding, employee voice can be help managers to understand and remedy performance problems. Employees are closes to customers, service users and equipment, therefore hold the knowledge of where and how improvements can be made.
Listening to an employees’ voice can help address differences of opinion, avoid employees becoming dissatisfied and disengaged and possibly resigning the role. When an employee’s voice is listened, valued and used to influence change, engagement within the work place is improved. Employee engagement has shown to a positive impact on performance.
What is the Voice Project?
The IPA and Tomorrow’s Company are working together on a project to explore in more depth the nature and importance of employee voice, working with some of the UK’s leading and respected organisations. Employee voice is a fast growing subject; in 2009 the Coalition Government requested Nita Clarke and David Macleod to build on their work surrounding employee engagement in their report “Engaging for Success: enhancing performance through employee engagement”. The Voice Project aims to release the power of employees’ voice.
How we are doing it?
In November we published our
interim report outlining the project aims and objectives. Over the next 6 months we will be completing a series of in-depth case studies looking at the employee voice in businesses. We will be looking at companies across different sectors of the economy to obtain an accurate picture of employee voice.
Who’s involved?
The project will be governed by the IPA and Tomorrow’s Company, but we are receiving support from the following organisations:
- BAE Systems
- British Gas
- HSBC
- International Automotive Components (IAC)
- TUI, UK and Ireland
- Unipart Group
How can you get involved?
Here is a list of key questions of what we want to know:
- What are the barriers to making voice effective in your organisation?
- How do you adapt voice to the changing business context?
- To what extend voice is integrated in your strategy
- To what extended voice is aligned with your culture?
- To what extend do you perceive voice as part of your business success?
- How is your organisation responding to the social media? Is it a threat or an opportunity?
We want to hear from you, if you have any experiences, research or thoughts then please contact us.
We are also interested for more companies to get involved, if you are interested please contact either:
Grahame Broadbelt:
grahame@tomorrowscompany.com or
Nita Clarke:
Nita.Clarke@ipa-involve.com
To find out more about Tomorrow’s Company, please visit their website:
http://www.tomorrowscompany.com/
