Employee Voice and How It Increases Well-Being and Productivity
Essay: Assessment Three
1001EHR Employment Relations
Mangers’ encouragement of employee voice can lift well-being and productivity. Discuss.
Employee voice is about the participation of employees by influencing decision making in the organisation. In the past, union voice has had the leading voice mechanism with supplementing from employers union voice with nominated non-union reps that often is sitting on joint consultative committees (Charlwood, 2006). The classic work of Freeman and Medoff (1984) regarding trade union showed that the definition of voice practices’ effects (Bryson, Charlwood and Forth, 2006) was the significance of the response from management to the voice of the worker (in particularly trade union voice). This essay will analyse the argument, that employee voice and union representation leads to higher well-being but no clear improvement of productivity.
According to Freeman and Medoff (1984) voice is important, because it makes it possible for unions of trade to improve firms’ productivity as they give a voice to the employees. Freeman and Medoff (1985) mentions two effects; Union “monopoly”, where the unions raise employee’s wages which leads to higher labour productivity and “voice” effect, where employees express their voice, which means that there will be fewer conflicts. According to Bryson et al. (2006) the “monopoly face” of unions, where they seek to limit the labour, which is supplied to the firm in quest of benefits and better wages, on the other hand might be estimated to have more harmful consequences. Rationally, forms of non-union voice might bring benefits in terms of productivity.
The voice or response face of the union can neutralize the monopoly face of union with the outcome that the results of unions on productivity are unclear (Freeman and Medoff, 1984). They claim that the voice of the union can be productivity-increasing where the costs of the voice are lower than what it costs to loose a worker that is not
1001EHR Employment Relations
Mangers’ encouragement of employee voice can lift well-being and productivity. Discuss.
Employee voice is about the participation of employees by influencing decision making in the organisation. In the past, union voice has had the leading voice mechanism with supplementing from employers union voice with nominated non-union reps that often is sitting on joint consultative committees (Charlwood, 2006). The classic work of Freeman and Medoff (1984) regarding trade union showed that the definition of voice practices’ effects (Bryson, Charlwood and Forth, 2006) was the significance of the response from management to the voice of the worker (in particularly trade union voice). This essay will analyse the argument, that employee voice and union representation leads to higher well-being but no clear improvement of productivity.
According to Freeman and Medoff (1984) voice is important, because it makes it possible for unions of trade to improve firms’ productivity as they give a voice to the employees. Freeman and Medoff (1985) mentions two effects; Union “monopoly”, where the unions raise employee’s wages which leads to higher labour productivity and “voice” effect, where employees express their voice, which means that there will be fewer conflicts. According to Bryson et al. (2006) the “monopoly face” of unions, where they seek to limit the labour, which is supplied to the firm in quest of benefits and better wages, on the other hand might be estimated to have more harmful consequences. Rationally, forms of non-union voice might bring benefits in terms of productivity.
The voice or response face of the union can neutralize the monopoly face of union with the outcome that the results of unions on productivity are unclear (Freeman and Medoff, 1984). They claim that the voice of the union can be productivity-increasing where the costs of the voice are lower than what it costs to loose a worker that is not
References: Bryson, A., Charlwood, A., and Forth J. (2006), ‘Worker voice, managerial response and labour productivity: an empirical investigation’, Industrial Relations Journal, 37, 5, pp. 438-455 Bryson, A., J Budd, J., Gollan, P. and Wilkinson, A., (2010), ‘New approaches to employee voice and participation in organizations’, Human Relations March 2010 63: 303-310 Charlwood, A Fernie, S. and D. Metcalf (1995), ‘Participation, Contingent Pay, Representation and Work- place Performance: Evidence from Great Britain’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 33, 3, 379–415. Freeman, R Hancock, K (2012) ‘Enterprise bargaining and productivity.’ Labour & Industry. 22 (3): 289-302 Hirsch, B Kaufman, B. (2004), ‘What do Unions do? Insights from Economic Theory’, Journal of Labor Research, 25, 3, 351–382. Kersley, B., C Metcalf, D. (2003a), ‘Unions and Productivity, Financial Performance and Investment: International Evidence’, in J. Addison and C. Schnabel (eds), International Handbook of TradeUnions Metcalf, D OECD Employment Outlook (2006), ‘Boosting jobs and income’ Peetz, D (2012) ‘Does industrial relations policy affect productivity?’ Australian Bulletin of Labour Peetz, D (2006) ‘Hollow shells: the alleged link between individual contracting and productivity growth.’ Journal of Australian Political Economy. 56: 32-55 Valadkhani, A