Abstract

Background and Aim: Employee voice has become an exciting subject both practice and to scholars, with some identifying employee voice as a crucial factor for organisational success, patient safety, and worker wellbeing (Martin et al., 2018; Ayop & Ishak, 2023). However, implementing effective voice mechanisms face challenges, such as organisational structures (e.g., Martin et al., 2020). With the shift from union to non-union voice in the private sector (Bryson et al., 2009) and the need for integrative frameworks (Mowbray et al., 2015; Wilkinson et al., 2020), the UK private sector is in the shadow. This study explores the employee voice in the private healthcare sector to understand whether employee voice is active or passive during
employment.
Methodology: This qualitative study employs a case study approach and uses digital netnography for data collection from three online communities before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The data was collected in two steps; step one, historical online posts were collected from these communities, and in step two, volunteers from the same online communities were invited for up to 15 minutes discussions online about their experiences of voice in their organisations. The autoethnographic approach was used in the first data analysis phase before the thematic data processing from online platforms and conversations.
Findings, Conclusions, and Implications: Five themes: ‘emotions, feelings, and perspectives’, ‘impact of involvement and participation’, ‘group, individual, or organisational’, ‘the illusion of voice’, ‘alienation of voice’ – emerged from digital nethnography data. Then, five more: ‘second-person perspective’, ‘third-person perspective’, ‘contractual issues’, ‘group and individual voice perspectives’, and ‘organisational importance’ – from conversations data. These ten themes were discussed with existing literature. My study carries significant implications for academics, policymakers, employees, employers, and trade unions, potentially shaping future policy decisions.
Contributions & future research: This thesis provided additional perspectives of voice: to view employee voice from emotions and feelings, the impact of involvement and participative, group, individual or organisational, illusive, and alienative perspectives, as participants expressed these. Again, this thesis contributes that employee voice is a contractual issue and employees are bound by their contract of employment; employee voice cannot be universally agreed upon, as different people have a different perspective of employee voice; employee voice is individual; employee voice is contextual, as the employee voice cannot be 'pigeon-holed' or categorised; employee voice is situational and time-based, as participants discussed employee voice in the moment and in time; employee voice is not static, it is emerging thing, as employee voice changes all the time; employee voice is environmental, as situations such as pandemic could have influenced employee voice, my research has
captured employee voice at a time of crisis in the world during COVID-19, and employees for private healthcare settings were frontline and were at risk, and no one was hearing them. Despite the limitations of smaller samples, my study also introduces new knowledge in employee voice and digital nethnography as a new method to be considered in future studies.