Sociology Report: Employee Voice and Communication in Healthcare

This report examines the critical issue of employee voice and upward communication within healthcare settings, highlighting its significant impact on patient care and organizational learning. The analysis focuses on the lack of critical upward feedback, which often leads to reluctance among employees to share information due to potential negative interpretations from superiors. The report identifies four key themes supporting employee voice: culture, CEO visibility and approachability, creating voice opportunities, and addressing risks and costs associated with speaking up. The CEO's role in fostering a positive culture, facilitating open communication channels, and ensuring psychological safety for employees is emphasized. The report references key studies to support the findings, underscoring the importance of employee engagement and feedback in improving healthcare outcomes and preventing errors. The report also includes a discussion of the CEO's behavior and actions which promote employee voice and upward communication in performance excellence award-winning healthcare organizations.

Sociology
3/16/2020

Sociology 1
Contents
Issue or problem identified in the article.........................................................................................2
Four themes supporting “employee voice” or lines of communication..........................................3
References........................................................................................................................................5

Sociology 2
Issue or problem identified in the article
In the article, the main issue that is focused on is related lack of the critical upward
feedback in the hospital setting that majorly hurts the direct care of the patients and also the
outcomes of the health. The lack of feedback to the employees makes them sometimes reluctant
to share the information as those above them might interpret the data to be negative or
threatening. It has been found in the article that leaders then may make the vital decisions that
are based on predictions or inaccurate feedback. This situation is considered as vital when it
comes to the healthcare setting where the hierarchical structures, divisions among clinicians and
administrators with the lack of collaboration across the different teams that strengthens the
silence of the employee and also the undermine learning of the organization. Thus, this has been
found that the major issue that is witnessed by the employee is related to the communication and
voice of the employee in healthcare due to lack of feedback.
In the organization, this chief executive officer performs a vital role in developing a
culture that promotes the voice of the employee as well as upward communication. The article
talks about the behavior of the specific CEO that facilitated the voice of the employee by being
approachable that is majorly attained through their consistency presence within the company. In
the organization of healthcare, the feedbacks to the employees at all the levels are essential to
bring the improvement as well as prevent the life-threatening errors (Butler & Whiting, 2019).
The article shows that all these feedbacks are essential to become the voice of the employee that
is intended to improve the functioning of the organization to someone with the authority to act.
Over here, when the employees deal with the issue of the upward communication then there is a
need for the proper feedback that makes the employees speak.

Sociology 3
Four themes supporting “employee voice” or lines of communication
The four themes that are supporting the voice of the employees include: -
Culture is another theme which leads to the positive voice of the employee. CEO of the
company and other leader interact with employees on often basis which affects the culture of the
company. A positive culture will allow the employees of healthcare to communicate more and
raise their voice on the different aspects of the organization. This view of the author is supported
with the view of Ruck, 2015 who presented the views that communication is promoted due to
cultue. In the article, this is determined that CEO of the company believed that organization
could attain the improvement as well as excellence only by fully involving the employees for
their different ideas, opinions as well as expertise.
The visibility and approachability of the CEO, as well as the other senior leaders,
emerged as one of the themes in the research study. This shows that all the CEO were visible as
well as they present in their companies regularly through rounding, employee-leader forums or
meetings along with their employees (Ruck, Welch & Menara, 2017). In the article, this is clear
that this presence allows the employees to conduct the face-to-face interaction with the CEO as
well as with other team leaders who are developing the trust and relationships.
Creating voice opportunity is one of the major themes that are highlighted in the article
which is believed by the CEO. The CEO of the company says that forming the voice of the
employees is one of the ways through which they can speak and take their communication
upward. In the article, the CEO says that forming voice opportunity include rounding as well as
face-to-face communication with the employees which is easily possible with the help of the
hallway conversation, open forums, celebrations on occasions, informal meals and many others.

Sociology 4
Shah, Shahjehan & Afsar, 2016 views says that all elements motivate and generate the
opportunity for the employees to get engage in communication and raise their voice in the
company.
Risks and costs are one of the most important themes that have been witnessed. Most of
the employees are not able to raise their voice due to the presence of the risks and costs.
Lundgren, & McMakin, 2018 views supports that risk and costs that promote the communication
as it allows the employees of the healthcare company must experience a sense of the
psychological safety before they will conduct all the exercise related to their voice and speak up
to the leaders present within the company. The climate of the safety can be formed by the CEO
which is possible with the support of forming the relationship as well as trust by advancing the
expectations that each employees jobs was to speak up with the opinions and concerns for
bringing the improvement.

Sociology 5
References
Butler, D. S., & Whiting, S. W. (2019). Perspectives on employee voice: A primer for
managers. The Psychologist-Manager Journal, 22(3-4), 154.
Lundgren, R. E., & McMakin, A. H. (2018). Risk communication: A handbook for
communicating environmental, safety, and health risks. John Wiley & Sons.
Ruck, K., Welch, M., & Menara, B. (2017). Employee voice: an antecedent to organisational
engagement?. Public Relations Review, 43(5), 904-914.
Ruck, M. K. (Ed.). (2015). Exploring internal communication: Towards informed employee
voice. Gower Publishing, Ltd..
Shah, S. I., Shahjehan, A., & Afsar, B. (2016). The façade of voice opportunity and intragroup
conflict. Makara Hubs-Asia, 20(2), 101-108.