Workers’ Voice Part 4: Managers: Attuned To Change But Tone-Deaf to Worker Voice
By Larry W. Beeferman, Contributing Author/ March 14, 2023
Larry W. Beeferman is a Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program (LWP) and an Independent Consultant. He joined the LWP in 2004 to help establish and for 14 years led the Pensions and Capital Stewardship Project (PCSP), focusing on both the design and management of pre-funded retirement plans and the capital stewardship of their and other institutional investors’ assets. The PCSP’s and Dr. Biederman’s ongoing work have included publications, conferences, other convenings, trustee education programs, and presentations on a wide range of topics, with extensive attention to labor and human rights and more broadly, workplace-related issues.
As a professor of law at the Massachusetts School of Law and faculty member at the Western New England School of Law, he taught constitutional and administrative law, legislation and legislative drafting, conflict of laws, cyberspace and the law, and private sector labor law. He helped establish and headed the Asset Development Institute at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management, where he formulated an asset-based policy framework for social welfare policy and conducted research and promoted dialogue among diverse constituencies on specific asset-based policies. As Associate Counsel to the Ward Commission in Massachusetts, he led a team which researched and analyzed corruption and mismanagement in the public building process; drafted legislation on capital planning and budgeting, real property management, and project management; and did similar work in reference to political campaign finance reform. He has also written books and articles on matters of law, science and technology, policy, and other issues. He is currently finishing the first of a two-volume study – to be published by Routledge Press – on the interests and role of public and private actors in decision-making with respect to infrastructure projects.
What Is Next
The thrust of the preceding articles has been the following: (1) narratives reflective of or associated with company perspectives paint a picture of (a) the ostensible centrality of a company’s workforce to its success; and (b) rapid changes – both external and internal to companies – which bear heavily on the ability of companies to gain and retain that workforce in ways and on terms critical to that success; (c) companies’ concomitant need to formulate and implement workplace policies and practices calculated to effectively respond to the challenges posed by those changes; (d) the potential importance for HR-related professionals to step into the breach, that is serve in new roles (as such and with respect to C-suites and Boards) with new responsibilities, drawing on different or additional capabilities to (i) analyze the specific workforce-related implications of those changes for the company, (ii) contribute to the development of its workforce strategy (and implicitly overall business strategy) in light of such implications; and (iii) identify and assess the efficacy of current and formulate new, specific workforce policies and practices consistent with the strategy and calculated to enable its success.
What To Do
In view of the above, the question is what should company leaders, including and perhaps especially HR-related professionals, do?
In general terms, such leaders and professionals might reconsider their understanding of the origin, nature, and implications of the changes which have occurred and the kinds of choices they posed for such individuals. Relatedly, insofar as their understanding is cast in terms of workers being (a) stakeholders in and appropriately sharing in the “value” created by the company; and (b) motivated by and contributing in a critical way to fulfillment of company purposes which include but extend beyond the achievement of financial success, they might make a stronger or renewed effort to move beyond presumably honest and well-intended rhetoric to what is required to render it meaningful in practical, day-day terms.
Actions To Take
Toward that end, there are specific actions which leaders and professionals might take.
The first two are of a more technical, information gathering nature.
First, both need a firm grasp of the nature and reach of worker voice at their companies. Toward that end, they can “map” worker voice at all levels and across the organization’s operations to determine the mechanisms workers have to communicate directly on a potentially broad range of issues – from, one-on-one, interpersonal relations to how they perform their work and/or the terms on or conditions under which they perform it to the import of the company’s provision of goods and/or services for the larger community and society – and then the mechanisms for company response, follow-up discussion, the resolution of any differences, and decisions on what actions to take. Next, both can assess the ways in which those mechanisms have – or have not – served the interests of both the company and workers; then solicit from workers their assessments and recommendations for possible alternative mechanisms. Clearly, such a comprehensive mapping would be demanding in time and resources. However, companies can make a start and focus on a segment and/or function of the organization – and the workers thought central to its operation – which are currently seen as particularly important to the company’s success but for which the prospects are uncertain or problematic. The learning from that exercise would then inform how the company might best proceed with a wider mapping.
Going Beyond the Conventional
A related and overlapping approach would be for the company to go beyond the conventional satisfaction or engagement survey – and variants thereof – and do a voice survey of workers. Workers would be asked (1) which currently available forms of voice are important to them in different aspects of their experience at or with respect to work and why, e.g., in what ways would having that form of voice make them more engaged in, more satisfied with, more productive in, etc. their work, and beyond that, contribute more to the success of the company; (2) which forms of voice not currently available would be important to them (and to the company) and why. Again an initial survey can focus on just a group of workers whose retention, performance, etc., are currently seen to be of particular importance.
What To Do
Two additional actions would be of a more personal and reflective nature.
One requires a certain amount of self-honesty – in some measure analytic but emotional-psychological as well – about existing voice mechanisms, especially arguably major ones which do not exist. With respect to the choice – or lack thereof – of one or another voice mechanism, company leaders must ask themselves: Does the company and/or do I believe that workers are not prepared to and/or are unlikely to contribute anything of value on this particular subject matter; and/or that workers might ask for changes which the company currently believes it does not want? Does the company or do I fear that any mechanism will raise workers’ expectations for change which the company does not want raised; or that if discussion is allowed on these matters, workers will have expectations for discussion about other matters which the company does not want raised, let alone consider changes with respect to them? In what ways is that fear a personal matter, that is, do I and others at the company experience or expect that such expressions of voice question or even denigrate my or others’ competence, sagacity, sincerity, generosity, etc.? Are those concerns or beliefs seriously warranted and if so, why?
Greater Seriousness
The other action requires a greater seriousness and a different kind of self-honesty. That is, company leaders can ask themselves: Have I given serious attention to learning about the use of mechanisms of worker voice at other companies or ones which appear serious-minded but are yet untested, and the reasons for success or otherwise? Have I given serious thought to the lessons learned about outcomes – for the company and the workers involved – with those mechanisms and to the merits of applying them at my company? If any of the answers are “no,” a leader can ask him/herself the same kinds of questions as above as to why.
Union Representation and Collective Bargaining
Clearly, union representation and collective bargaining are by far the most prominent voice mechanisms with regard to the matters within their scope. As noted earlier, the broad and vigorous (if not, at times, extra-legal) opposition by companies in this country to those mechanisms is evident, so the prospects for serious-minded reflection and reconsideration of that stance by company leaders seems highly unlikely except in the face of strong and sustained insistence by the workers involved. Nonetheless, clearly, there can be much to be learned from productive union-company relationships here and even more so in other countries, for example, Western Europe, for at least innovative thinking about voice mechanisms here. (Of course, a number of companies which operate non-union in the United States, by law and circumstance, operate union in other countries (in part by virtue of more labor friendly legal regimes) so they might more readily make cogent comparisons).
Challenges
It must be acknowledged that for matters covered by union relationships there are, in principle, challenges even when companies might be more open to extending voice mechanisms. Because companies went beyond just opposition to legitimate unions to set up sham – so-called “company” – unions to keep legitimate ones out, the NLRA, enacted in 1935, barred companies from dominating or interfering with the formation or administration of a “labor organization” – which by definition involves workers dealing with employers on matters covered by the NLRA, e.g., wages, grievances, etc. – or supporting it financially or otherwise. And certainly, given that history, unions are quite suspicious of any company experiments on those grounds as well as a hardly unfounded fear that the experiment is simply a means to stand in the way of a legitimate union organizing effort. So, however auspicious experiments might be, companies which are risk averse to making ones which might seem to be at the border of the law, may not pursue them. Note that the strictures under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), which apply to railroads and airlines, are less strong.
New Mechanisms
Nonetheless, whether under the rubric of quality circles, safety committees, advisory councils, employee focus or resource groups, etc., some very modest voice mechanisms have been taken up and continue to this day. (Note that before the enactment of the NLRA some companies had even more extensive mechanisms.) It is up to innovative, forward-looking company leaders to move beyond these examples with new mechanisms which render worker voice more meaningful (while they both stay within the bounds of the law and do not signal to workers that the changes are meant to stifle or thwart any interest they might have in a union form of voice). In this connection it is worth taking note of the Delta Airlines (non-union) “employee involvement” program extending from the shop floor to the board level, with the latter including a non-voting seat on the Board being held by a Delta Board Council and involvement in a range of strategic decisions and roles (which passes muster under the RLA).
Worker Representation on Boards
That we so remark does not require writing a brief for the Delta program, especially given the history of its origins and the challenges in sustaining it, but rather simply to suggest that it highlights that there is room for and there should be creative experiments with voice which could be of benefit to both workers and companies. For example, although works councils as they operate under European law are not permissible here (at least in the absence of union representation as well) whether there is room for a “light” version consistent with the American experience is worth exploring. There are other possibilities, of course, which go beyond matters subject to collective bargaining. For example, there is some history in the U.S. with worker representation on company boards – of course a lengthy one in Western Europe – which is drawing greater attention now with perhaps a greater receptiveness on the part of some company leaders than might have been expected.
The Importance of Worker Voice
In all events, it is encouraging that company leaders have recognized or acknowledged the centrality of workers and the worker-company relationship to company performance, identified and sought to learn how the kinds of changes described here bear on such performance, and reconfigured senior leadership roles and responsibilities and in certain ways looked to different workplace policies and practices to respond to the challenges posed. Now, however, leaders need to better understand the importance of worker voice to success for their companies and workers and, in turn, it is time for them to step forward with meaningful action to make that success possible.