Delegates attending last week’s The Voice and Value conference learned that employers must create an office culture of openness and trust in order to tackle the UK’s imbalance of power in business.
The conference, co-hosted by the London School of Economics (LSE) and the CIPD, brought HR professionals and leading academics together to discuss the importance of having a productive dialogue between employees and management.
Most managers already know that employees are keen to have a say in what goes on in the organisations for which they work; however, the importance of allowing this to happen has escaped many over the past few years.
Employers must strive to allow their workers to have a voice through the right means, with social media being a tool that was discussed at the conference.
“Many companies are relying on social media as a tool to get people engaged and a platform for people to have their say,” explained Andrea Broughton, a principal research fellow at the Institute for Employment Studies.
She added: “But social media is only good as a tool if the culture is already there. If we look at our European counterparts in France, works councils are an expected and celebrated thing, but we must remember that we are starting in a very different place in the UK. We can’t build an employee voice by putting systems into an existing model; we have to build from the ground up.”
This theory is not without critics, many citing that the tried-and-true ‘control and command’ approach is much easier for managers.
Attendees also discussed trade unions ‒ the traditional mode of employee representation ‒ but contended that while the service the unions provide is indeed essential, it is not always the answer. Discussions highlighted that employers must adjust to a more well-rounded and robust system of allowing their staff a voice.