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A recent study published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology looks at what leads employees to speak up or stay silent.
Employee voice is the discretionary decision to speak up — to raise a concern, offer a suggestion.
There are two forms. Promotive voice is constructive and forward-looking — speaking up with ideas, improvements, or suggestions. Prohibitive voice is preventive and protective — raising concerns about risks, errors, or ethical issues.
Voice is not a personality trait. It is a motivated behaviour, shaped by the social environment. Whether an employee speaks up depends substantially on what they expect to happen when they do.
A substantial body of research has established that the most important driver of voice behaviour is the perceived climate for voice — the sense that speaking up is encouraged, valued, and worthwhile.
This is related to, but distinct from, psychological safety. Psychological safety is the broader perception that it is safe to take interpersonal risks. Voice climate is more specific: does speaking up here lead anywhere? Will it be well received? Is it worth the effort? When employees perceive a strong voice climate, they speak up more.
Conditions for voice sit mainly at the team level and are shaped primarily by managers. An organisation-wide communication about the importance of speaking up will have limited effect if the experience at the team level does not support it. What does support it, in practice, is the visible response to voice when it occurs. Acknowledgement, follow-through, and honest feedback about what happened to a suggestion or concern — these are the signals that tell employees whether voice is worth the effort.
Silence, in this context, is not the absence of voice. It is the active withholding of something an employee could have said: a kept-back suggestion, an unraised concern.
Research suggests that voice and silence are underpinned by different psychological mechanisms. Voice is associated with what psychologists call a behavioural activation system — it is energised by the perception of opportunity and reward. Silence is associated with a behavioural inhibition system — it is more sensitive to threat, risk, and the conservation of resources.
The practical significance of this is that the conditions which increase voice are not necessarily the same conditions that reduce silence. An employee might be speaking up about some things while staying quiet about others. A team might have a strong voice climate on operational issues while remaining silent on more sensitive ones.
The Parker study draws on Conservation of Resources theory — developed by Stevan Hobfoll and widely applied in occupational psychology — as its theoretical framework.
The theory proposes that people are motivated to acquire, protect, and build resources — things they value, whether that is energy, social relationships, or a sense of being effective at work. When resources are threatened or lost, people act to protect what they have.
When resources are available, people are more willing to invest them in pursuit of further gain.
Applied to voice and silence, speaking up is a form of resource investment — an employee who perceives a supportive voice climate sees an opportunity for resource gain.
Silence, by contrast, can function as a resource conservation strategy — withholding input to protect energy when there is little left to spend.
Parker and colleagues tracked 193 healthcare workers in the UK across 10 weeks, measuring voice behaviour, silence behaviour, emotional exhaustion, and perceived voice climate on a weekly basis.
The central finding was a robust positive cycle between voice behaviour and perceived voice climate.
A better perceived climate for voice one week predicted more voice the following week. More voice one week predicted a better perceived climate the week after.
The two reinforced each other across the study period — and voice climate also independently reduced silence over time.
The study also examined the relationship between emotional exhaustion and silence.
The two were correlated within weeks — employees who reported feeling more exhausted in a given week also tended to be more silent that week.
The research was not able to establish the causal direction of the relationship with confidence. What it does suggest is that exhaustion and silence are linked and that both are worth monitoring — particularly in teams where workload pressure is high.
The questions used in the study could be adapted and used in any employee survey where there is an interest in understanding voice in the organisation.
Parker and colleagues suggest that interventions targeting the social context around voice — through team or leader development, or broader culture change initiatives — may show benefits relatively quickly, given how rapidly the positive cycle between voice and climate can build.
Managers play a central role. The study specifically highlights inclusive leadership and explicit encouragement as the means through which voice climate is cultivated day to day — not only increasing voice but also reducing silence.
Parker and colleagues also suggest that approaches targeting both climate and behaviour together are likely most effective.
Supporting managers to create the right conditions for voice, while also building employees’ confidence and skills in speaking up constructively, reinforces both sides of the cycle.
On exhaustion and silence: the study suggests that short-term spikes in exhaustion may be worth monitoring as a potential signal of silence, given the two tend to be linked on a weekly basis. Identifying what is driving exhaustion in those circumstances — and responding to it — may be as important as any climate-focused intervention.
Parker and colleagues’ study adds to what we know about employee voice — and introduces a useful distinction between voice and silence that has practical implications. The evidence points clearly to voice climate as the key driver — and to the team level as the place where it is built and sustained.
If you would like to talk about how your survey approach captures voice and silence, we would be glad to help.
Let’s start a conversation about how employee surveys can help you develop a workplace where people and performance grow together.
