Employee voice in Australia: the impact of employee participation arrangements on organisational performance and employee well-being

Full description

The goals of the project are to investigate the forms in which employees are able to voice their opinions, ideas and feedback, both formally and informally within organisations, and their consequences and effectiveness. 

Specific goals are:

• To provide practical guidance for employers in the establishment of employee voice arrangements, by identifying the consequences and effectiveness of recent changes to the existing legislative industrial relations framework.
• Identify how employers develop voice strategies, and the factors that lead to their success or failure.
• Yield new insights by examining the effectiveness of contemporary employee voice arrangements existing alongside, or increasingly in the absence of, traditional voice arrangements provided by trade unions.
• Provide immediate benefits by delivering quantitative data and practical case studies that will help managers better design future workplaces.

The research describes:

• Employee voice mechanisms within the organisation, how they are initially formed and how they are structured
• The consequences or effectiveness of these voice arrangements, such as impact on organisations in facing the future competition, being more adaptive organisations, having a more productive or engaged workforce, managers becoming better people managers, or employees gaining benefits in relation to job satisfaction, work-life balance and wellbeing.