Introducing Employee Voice in the Global North

In today’s world of work, workers’ interests and their ability to speak up or remain silent about work-related issues remain salient. This position has popularised discussion of the concepts of employee voice and silence in the media, among academics, and among business practitioners. Human resources (employees) remain the backbone of any organisation. Even robotic and artificial intelligence organisations still require human assistance to function very well at various stages. Therefore, humans are involved and cannot be completely set aside in organisation systems. Thus, the concept of employee voice advocates active rather than passive involvement of employees in work and organisation-related issues. It projects employees as important stakeholders whose ideas, opinions, concerns, complaints, and suggestions must be taken seriously and acted upon, which gives rise to the phenomenon of employee involvement, whose adoption could be direct or indirect. Employee voice entail the various mechanisms by which employees are able to exert their input—formally or informally, collectively or individually—in organisational decision-making processes, with the goal of influencing not just their personal and work-related interests but also those of their superiors and organisations (Barry & Wilkinson, 2016; Wilkinson et al., 2020). The contrast here is employee silence, where employees’ means of participating in organisational decision-making process is rendered near impossible or disabled at worse, which also presents numerous implications for the individuals and organisations in question (Dundon & Gollan, 2007; Morrison, 2014). Employee silence is the withholding of genuine expression and information about the organisation from important stakeholders who can make things happen in an organisation. Silence may be acquiescent—a passive withholding of relevant information—or quiescent—an active withholding of relevant information, which is often done because of fear and potential risk (see Pinder & Harlos, 2001).