Question 10
Critically evaluate a common intervention used by people management professionals to enable all voices in an organisation to be heard. Justify your answer.
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From the time COVID-19 pandemic emerged, the business world has been characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) World. As a result, Koshemani (2020) note that the people practice professionals have been prompted to invest on strategies for ensuring employees voice are harnessed while increasing productivity and workplace engagement. According to Maxwell (2021), the employee voice identifies the approach used in communicating views to employer and is found influencing issues affecting them in their work roles. Nevertheless, considering GOV.UK (2021) report, the success of employee voice is significantly impacted by a set of occurrence and factors in the business environment. These factors entail the remote working approaches, increased workforce diversity and alternative work arrangements and creation of new challenges for employee’s capacity to demonstrate a say over their working conditions and decisions made.
The need of embracing common interventions applied by people management professionals for enabling employee voice is informed by a set of trends;
HR function has become strategic– As evidenced in People insight (2021), the people practice is consistently becoming strategic business partner which is harnessed through strategic design of systems (technologies embrace, rewarding and compensation and resourcing approaches). For instance, considering recent Almarai organization change integrating remote working in their operations, its success has been credited to holistic engagement and involvement of all stakeholders with their voice heard. The change had been triggered by economic pressures and clients demands influenced by prevalence of COVID-19 pandemic.
Recognizing Role of employees in Change– According to CIPD (2021), for organisations survival in the VUCA World, they are expected to undergo to some form of change. This is a strategy of responding to the distinct market environment competitiveness and transforming their technloties. For instance, in Almarai, in majority of their change process, they tend to adopt the Kotter’s 8 Phases of Change (Laig & Abocejo, 2021). The phases specifically powerful coalition, communicating vision, empowering actions, building change and making it stick all entail involving employees in the process of change with their voice prioritized.
Need for holistic feedback integration– As evidenced in People insight (2021), majority of entities today experience issues with uncoordinated, ad hoc requests in the feedback offered. Hence, it is essential ensuring feedback is efficiently attained, integrated and relevantly harnessing the voice. For instance, part of the feedback entail ensuring that the driving forces/positive forces of change are compared with the restraining forces/obstacles to change.
Employees push for their voice to be heard–
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