Does Your Organization Value Employee Voice or Silence? Six Ways to Value Voice
While photos of young protesters marching on the streets and vitriolic barbs rolling off Twitter’s feathery wings may give the impression that individual and collective voice has never been stronger, the workplace continues to be a social environment where voice remains anemic. Just think over your past week at work — did you notice something and choose to hold your tongue, either thinking, “It’s not worth the effort” or “What will people think of me if I say that?”
According to a 2016 study, 50% to 70% of employees reported instances where they let slacking peers off the hook or failed to address disrespectful behavior. One of the most commonly “withheld” insights had to do with inaccuracies or faulty thinking in proposals or procedures — a staggering missed opportunity for organizations that seek new ways to grow and to innovate.
At first glance, those statistics are surprising given how much companies, these days, are trying to literally and metaphorically tear down the cubicle-walls so that employees can speak to and hear each other better. Fostering employee voice is indeed the linchpin to encouraging, as we’ve written before, more authentically diverse environments, more innovative cultures, and ending bullying in the workplace. So why is there so little progress?
While “employee voice” has gotten a lot of attention, “employee silence,” its twin-brother, is rarely discussed in its own right. Though not always two sides of the same coin, Voice and Silence capture an employee’s choice to either share or withhold work-related information that may benefit the organization in significant ways. Instead of jumping straight into asking, “How do we encourage people’s voices?” organizations should first take a hard look in the mirror and decide, “Which do we actually value more: Voice or Silence?”
The Value of Employee Voice and Silence in the Organization Marketplace
You’re a senior leader who is visiting a group of front-line customer service associates. One of them turns to you and tells you that a manager for her branch often comes back with new ideas from training events that someone like her is supposed to implement. The associate pauses, looks you in the eye, and then gives it to you straight: “If it’s not something I want to do, and it’s not my idea, it’s not going to work.” How do you react?
Though some managers might have responded with a reprimand, Jim Weddle, managing partner at Edward Jones, one of the top-rated workplaces in the financial services and insurance industry, took a different approach. According to Ed Frauenheim, the Fortune reporter who first told this story, Weddle took the associate’s feedback to heart and from there ensured that all offsite events would include front-line associates, not just managers.
Had Weddle reprimanded the gutsy employee, she would have likely walked away with the feeling that, even when noticing faulty plans and processes, she might be better off remaining silent in the future. After all, she did not have to convey her genuine reaction to her supervisor’s behavior. Employee voice, as research shows, is fundamentally about the “discretionary communication …of …information… with the intent to bring about improvement or change.” Employee silence, on the other hand, refers “to not speaking up when having something meaningful to share.”
Employees gauge which of these two behaviors the organization values more, not based on rhetoric but the way in which they are treated in the work environment. Thus, companies will likely get the behavior that are mostly interested in obtaining from employees. A company such as Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, places a high premium on Voice. Employees are expected to provide constant and direct feedback to one another in-person or publicly through Bridgewater’s proprietary apps — once, the CEO, Ray Dalio, received feedback from a 24-year old female employee that his performance in a meeting was “trash.”
A company such as Volkswagen, on the other hand, placed a high value on Silence. Former CEO, Martin Winterkorn, was notorious for jumping on the smallest problem to criticize it. “If you presented bad news, those were the moments that it could become quite unpleasant and loud and quite demeaning.” It is no surprise that VW became entangled in one of the most unethical ‘cover-ups’ of the past 10 years. Indeed, futility of voice and fear of retaliation are two chief reasons why employees choose Silence over Voice.
If we understand Voice and Silence as two currencies with differing values that employees are constantly evaluating in an “organization marketplace,” then it’s easy to see that people do not weigh Voice and Silence independently in a vacuum. Rather, they likely evaluate them simultaneously, considering the implicit value that the organization attributes to them. If Voice is associated with negative consequences (or “high costs”), then its value goes down, which will simultaneously increase the value of Silence. Indeed, employees do seem to engage in a cost-benefit analysis in deciding between Silence or Voice: According to a study, as many as 42% of employees withheld information when feeling there was nothing to gain or something to lose by sharing it.
But valuing Silence has steep costs for an organization, as Voice is an expression of self, a potential source of individual ingenuity, and an important pathway to personal growth. By investing in employee voice, not only would companies better value their employees, but they would also help their workforce experience a greater sense of engagement. It is unsurprising that less than 50% of employees are engaged today given that many companies may be, consciously or unconsciously, asking their workforce to show up with open minds but closed mouths. If people cannot dissent, if their ideas do not really matter, if their opinions are interesting but beyond the point, if somebody else knows better, what means are left for people to engage and feel engaged?
This is why the costs of Silence should not be counted just in terms of the missed valuable ideas or averted crises, but also by looking at the dampening effect that Silence is likely to have on individual engagement and ownership.
Increasing the Value of Voice Over Silence
It is often assumed that companies value employee voice; yet, today organizations may still assign greater value to employee silence. If, deep down, an organization is more comfortable with Silence rather than Voice, then it doesn’t matter how many suggestion boxes, surveys and/or hotlines it sets up — people will largely ignore these resources. Recently, a Chicago alderman brought forth a proposal requiring businesses to post signs warning that sexual harassment is illegal and informing workers to file complaints with public agencies within 180 days. Proposals like this are a good start, but for Voice to acquire real value, it must be valued culturally and systematically, a far greater shift than the introduction of procedures to share feedback and report issues. Six changes are critical in this context:
1. Start measuring both silence and voice. While Voice is often measured by asking people whether they feel comfortable speaking up in surveys, Silence, a more difficult behavior to capture and gauge, should be at least assessed by measuring intention/likelihood to share meaningful or difficult information. Managers and leaders should be held accountable on their ability to create a psychologically safe climate through these ratings and aptly triangulated hard behavioral measures (e.g., average suggestions per team, average turnover rate — yes, quitting is a sign of “voice” — etc.)
2. Don’t just ask for people to chime in with “suggestions and concerns”; ask also for their “dissent and opinions.” Explicitly welcoming dissent and differing opinions is critical, as the evidence shows that managers, particularly insecure ones, may view employee voice as a threat to their competence and status or interpret it as a form of disrespect.
3. Decouple “criticism” with “disloyalty.” Do you know a company in which senior leadership is trying to accomplish a turnaround or achieve impossible growth goals while signaling to the workforce that certain targets are not to be questioned or second-guessed? If you do, you have a first-hand example of when voice is likely to be viewed as a form of disloyalty. It’s okay if your organization values “loyalty.” The key is to make it clear that criticism can be the ultimate expression of loyalty.
4. A tolerance for dissent can be methodically built by increasing the value of divergent thinking and diverse backgrounds — this is a value that Edward Jones recognizes. Different perspectives shouldn’t just be nominally included, but systematically invited to contribute with their own unique voice and views, as we’ve previously written. Additionally, encourage managers to rotate across posts and teams while increasing the autonomy of individual contributors within each team to build manager openness and avoid the creation of fiefdoms.
5. Truly care for your employees. It sounds simple, but people are more likely to exercise voice in a caring climate versus a selfish culture. Employees who feel cared for are more likely to want to stick their neck out and speak up. In contrast, valuing Silence reinforces a selfish culture (i.e. “If nobody cares about what I have to say, why should I care?”).
6. Start with small steps. Voice is like a muscle that requires practice. If an organization has always valued Silence, it’ll take time for people to come out of their shell and use their own voice. But small opportunities can help exercise this muscle. For example, teams may be encouraged to adopt free-practice meetings where people can start being honest and open about issues that matter to them, shared presentations during which individuals and/or pairs present one or more original ideas, daily stand-ups where team members openly describe challenges and ask others for help, local hackathons where anyone is invited to solve a wicked problem or come up with unorthodox ideas, etc.
Embracing employee voice is a critical endeavor if both the organization and its employees are to grow and evolve, but it is no easy feat. Companies should get clarity on what it entails in their culture, acknowledge the potential discomfort or challenges that may arise, and chart a learning path of development that absorbs that discomfort. Only by obtaining everyone’s honest feedback and input can organizations avoid groupthink, check mental biases, improve upon the status quo and develop new strengths.
