The August 2025 Employee Owners Knowledge Share focused on the topic: developing effective employee voice.
We were fortunate to be joined by Dr Shelley Poole, MD and Founder of Wellington HR, who advises businesses on their HR, culture and policy needs, and has undertaken research on the employee ownership sector to identify how a business can best hear employee voice and what employees want to use their voice to talk about.
Developing Effective Employee Voice
An expectation of employee owned businesses is that the voice of employees is encouraged, enabled and engaged with, now that they have become ‘employee owners’. But employee voice means different things to different people, and without careful thought about how best to harness the power of this, it can become reduced to chat only about coffee supplies and the Christmas party.
To get the best for the business from employees using their voice, and to ensure employees who use their voice are encouraged to do so on an ongoing basis, can often be a challenge as much as an opportunity.
What should businesses do with employee voice? Where specifically do you and they want their voice to be used? Is voice being used for the benefit of the business? Do you have a diversity of voice? These are questions an employee owned business might ask or consider.
Our key takeaways from the August knowledge share, following Shelley’s Q&A and our conversations, are:
1. The Nature of Employee Voice
What do people want their voice to be used to speak and be heard about? Shelley’s research suggests that, yes, finances and the profit share are important, but actually so are other less obvious and sometimes smaller areas of voice that can contribute to a stronger sense of being heard and of being asked.
It is in the mechanism and process of being asked, being listened to and being responded to that encourages voice and unlocks the benefit to a business of it. The discussion also suggests that if people ‘feel’ listened to, they are also more likely to accept outcomes, as they have been engaged with as equal partners.
Beyond the assumption that employees are only interested in using their voice for certain topics, and that they might only use their voice for their own benefit, the research showed that employees in employee owned businesses can use their voice to promote a decision that goes against their direct self-interest when it is in the interest of the business and their colleagues. The example discussed was furlough leave during the COVID pandemic and how employees voted for lower pay to ensure their business did not have to lay-off colleagues or face future uncertainty of its longer term operation.
2. Enabling Accessibility and Inclusion
A further finding was that ‘how’ and ‘where’ people want their voice to be heard can be as important as on ‘what’ their voice is being heard on. There is no one size fits all approach, some people are happy to express verbally and publicly, some like time to digest, some would prefer to share their voice through technology, and so on.
Further to this, thinking from an Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion perspective, might there be language barriers or those relating to a disability that can make a big difference to everyone sharing their voice to the best of their ability?
So, how can you make sure you are considering accessibility? At the start of someone’s employment you can ensure you understand their needs and put appropriate measures in place, rather than seeking employee voice in only an open-ended format consider putting specific and targeted questions to people and build up a range of mechanisms that account for location of and type of voice you seek to capture.
3. Balancing Culture and Business Needs
In the transition to employee ownership, some businesses can get caught being too nice that they overlook being fair. Employee ownership often takes place in a business where a positive culture exists, however that sometimes means that if businesses are having a challenge with an employee, they sometimes can feel trapped to make sure employees feel okay without the balance of making sure that it is right by the business and the rest of the workforce.
Leaders and managers should ask: how can we get the balance right between supporting the employee and making sure the business remains successful in the long term?
4. Structures and Practices for Employee Ownership Businesses
When it comes to managing employees and employee voice from a HR perspective there are some key themes that arise in employee owned businesses:
- With appraisal and performance management frameworks: feedback should be approached with great importance to ensure employees don’t feel like it is just lip-service – this runs counter to wanting employees to think and act like owners.
- Clarity with agreed policies: discretionary treatment, for example in applying sick pay policy, can lead to distrust and even discrimination claims.
- With setting expectations on employee voice: if you are clear and visible that you champion employee voice, during recruitment and induction processes, then you need to deliver. If you do then you will stand out in the recruitment market and get the right people in to your business, if you misrepresent then you open up the possibility of challenges in time.
Stephens Scown hosts the Employee Owners Knowledge Share monthly to help create a community space for employee owners, and those looking to transition. If you are interested in joining future sessions, please visit our Events page.
This article was co-written by and Sam Moles (Ownership Engagement Advisor) and Dave Robbins (Associate in our Corporate team) who are both former employee ownership trustees, and currently sit on the firm’s Strategy Board.