Keeping employees informed and employee voice: Adopting an employee-centric perspective

This chapter focuses on two fundamental components of practice: keeping employees informed and employee voice. It adopts an employee-centric perspective based on the author’s research with employees which explored their communication expectations. It is the combination of keeping employees informed and employee voice that is important. An over-emphasis on keeping employees informed at the expense of employee voice has an adverse impact on engagement, innovation and performance. It can also lead to employee cynicism about internal communication when it can become seen as management propaganda. Employees’ responses to organisational policies, practices and structures affect their potential to experience engagement. According to Byrne and LeMay, ‘Quality of information refers to whether the communication is relevant, accurate, reliable and timely’. Employee voice can involve opportunities for employees and managers to exchange views about issues, as well as upward problem-solving with opportunities for employees to provide feedback on specific topics.