AC 1.1 A review of emerging developments to inform approaches to employee voice and engagement

The past few decades have seen increased recognition of the significance of employee voice to organisational growth. According to (The future of employee voice | CIPD, 2022) employee voice goes beyond giving employees a platform to speak their minds as it also involves offering feedback on the obtained insights, guaranteeing transparency, and encouraging employee participation. Another organisational aspect gaining popularity is employee engagement, which has improved employee satisfaction and trust resulting in a cohesive and productive workforce. While employee engagement continues to gain prominence, employee voice remains unexplored in several organisations, with most of them maintaining traditional systems such as annual employee surveys (The future of employee voice | CIPD, 2022). Furthermore, evidence has shown that many organisations in the UK are becoming less transparent as years go by. The study carried out by The Centre for People, Work, and Organisational Practice at Nottingham Trent University in partnership with the CIPD and YouGov showed that employee voice was less in bigger organisations than in smaller organisations (The future of employee voice | CIPD, 2022). The research also indicated that many employees opt out of trade unions, with only 17% of the UK workforce being active participants in trade unions. It also stated that only 49 % of employees use team meetings to speak out their views (Hodgkinson, 2018). However, while traditional methods such as trade unions are becoming less popular, technology is revolutionizing the workplace as social media platforms become popular employee voice tools. With the development of social media, employees’ ability to express their opinions has matured. These developments have increased employee expectations of how they should be heard in the workplace. Social media has pioneered ways of eliciting employee voices that have shifted the organisation’s communication patterns from one-way or two-way to multi-directional.