Hi Dr. Jeevan Jyoti. You have rightly pointed that employee silence needs to be managed. Actually some employees are silent by nature and their silence does not affect the organisation adversely as they are silent workers. Some high performing employees becomes silent due to some organisational politics to downgrade the performance of the individual but they wait for appropriate time to show their performance. During this period, the silence of employee is bound to affect organisational effectiveness. To improve this situation, the management need to come forward to address his concern and regaining his performance through confidence building. It is human tendency that   'one is unhappy not because of his sorrows but one is unhappy because of others happiness' which need to be reversed in present day competitive environment.        

Employee silence is an issue of major concern for organizations. The employees reluctance to speak results in vital information, data, knowledge, and creativity to remain within the folds of each individual employee- which often have dire consequences for any business. Apart from lack of confidence, there are several issues which may lead to 'employee silence'. It is important for organizations to uncover the causes that lead to employee silence and address those issues.

Poor managerial attitude and organizational culture  also breed employee silence. Managers must encourage downward and two-way communication. The organization must follow a open door policy and managers' must be approachable and sensitive.

Moreover, the organization also needs to ensure that employees voicing their concerns are not treated badly and not visualized as trouble makers. Many employees do not speak up because of fear of the consequences that might follow. It is important to recognize employee fears.

It is important to build a culture of trust where employees trust the management. This makes it easier for them to share and voice their information and concerns.

Management need to develop a culture of trust. If we talk about silence specifically as *when people have concerns which they do not inform their management of*. It is not about silence - it is about overcoming cultural and social hindrances to effective communication - e.g. lack of *professional dialogue*. Both silence and voicing behaviour can be supportive effective communication and / or a distraction from effective communication. 

Be fair, rather than punitive when employees do speak up. Be genuine. If you do not care about employees and are only faking it, it will be obvious, and counterproductive.

Make sure you do not gather feedback and then let dust collect on them (whether literally or metaphorically). If you ask people to share their concerns, you then need to respond promptly and appropriately or your lack of responsiveness can actually result in further declines within the workplace.

Don't use people your employees do not trust as the collectors of feedback. There are people who have referent power in the organisation (others look up to and like them) and they may be some of the best people to help you get your programme off the ground by getting other employees to buy in. Sell these people on your initiative and others will follow.

Provide alternative modes of communication for employees to choose from. These would include:

• suggestion boxes, email, and even letters for those who prefer to write
• consultation forums (fora), staff meetings, open door policies for those who prefer to speak whether publicly or privately
• social media modalities such as a company facebook group (could be private for just your employees, or could be open to a wider cache depending on your needs and preferences)
• competitions/ giveaways to inject some fun or give a little added incentive to build interest, confidence etc. in employees

Hope this helped.

This depends on the reason for their silence.  If there is a 'neurotic' culture in the organisation (see Miller and Kets de Vries), or various forms of toxic leadership that have silenced people (see Furnham Elephant in the Boardroom), encouraging people to speak will not take place in extreme cases without removing the sources of toxicity and legal protections for those who might be willing to speak.

 I agree with Mr. Bednar that in order to remove silence we have to  overcome the  cultural and social hindrances to effective communication. Further we have to identify other reasons for being silent especially the toxic leadership.

There are also multicultural and cross-cultural differences that may play a role depending on the profile of the staff, both in terms of those who come from cultures where silence is more common, and also problems of cross-cultural conflict from which many will retreat.

Employee silence can mean many things; for instance just not contributing to the information flows in an organisation and therefore helping the organisation to achieve its aims, or at another extreme the fear of raising their voice through whistle blowing. It appears to me that it is a matter of organisational culture, since a large organisation will comprise individuals of a wide range of personalities (introvert through to extrovert). Trust I think is the one one the key issues, see for example Rotter (1967, p.651) "One of the most salient factors in the effectiveness of our present complex social organization is the willingness of one or more individuals in asocial unit to trust others. The efficiency, adjustment, and even survival of any social group depends upon the presence or absence of such trust".

The employee silence probably stems in the first instance from mutual distrust. It appears to me that this can stem from either management over confidence (egoism) or equally lack of self confidence (expressed through bullying) . Which one is a matter of fact. 

One of the other dimensions that is critical is the jurisdiction in which the organisation is located - the political system and whether the state is stable or undergoing fragmentation, war, or revolution; the economic system - and whether it is heavily affected by external forces; and the culture, traditions and religions involved.  In many traditions, one is supposed to remain silent under certain conditions, but speak out in others.  On an international level, the conditions vary considerably, and it depends on whether some individuals are minorities - or have even been 'securitised' in the country.  Status group and social class also have an influence.

I agree very much with the comment about the differing international context. My response was given firmly from the Anglo American view, which may not be appropriate for the Indian situation. I agree also with comments about groups, since in my view they represent a key part  of the question 

Managerial regard is an important issue: managers should not give the impression that employees have a voice if it is actually not the case. See: de Vries, Jehn, & Terwel, 2012 (Journal of Business Ethics)

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The effort management should make to raise employees confidence level is listen to employees.  Actually hear what they say.  Follow through on your leadership skills and if their opinion really counts let them know it otherwise don't ask for it and give them false hope because then the problem of silence comes in. 

Hello Dr. Jeevan Jyoti 

An organisational climate of fairness and engagement should be the long term goal. Employees must feel that by voicing their concerns, they are not jeopardizing their careers. In the short term, employees can express themselves through surveys that can be administered anonymously via surveymonkey, for instance. This has become common practice in many organisations.

Daryn

Thank you Gerdien de Vries, Toni Davis and Daryn Dyer  for participating and giving valuable insights

I agree surveys are an important tool, though I prefer them not to be anonymous. Where employees mention their names, and are assured of full confidentiality, they take greater responsibility for their inputs.

Other methods are: make it easier for the employees to give inputs. Administer a short well-designed questionnaire which requires only objective responses and does not take much time of the employees, but gives you valuable data.

Or, engage a third party facilitator for focus-group-discussions,where all employees are encouraged to participate.

Think organization / management can try the following in order to make silent employees to voice their concerns:

1) during the meeting with many colleagues presence, perhaps can publicly ask the silent employee in which this might urge him or her to share his or her opinions / comments.

2) conduct a private session with them individually to understand why they are silent e.g. might due to no comment, indifference, disagreement, presence of their superiors in the same meeting, relationship bond (some employees will not raise any question / comment if they are not close to you), personal / family issues, or might due to cultural factors (i.e. some cultural values are less vocal than others) etc.  Once the root cause is identified, one knows how to deal with it or accept as it is.

3) management can also solicit the employee's answer / opinion in the private session if the employee not willing to share his or her view in public with the presence of many other employees, colleagues, superiors etc.

Jeevan,

I recommend looking into the psychological safety literature. Here is a paper to get you started.

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I was just thinking about other considerations - are they silent because they are in a toxic organisation? Are they in an org becoming a 'total institution'? Are there many extra-organisational problems in the society that affect their family/private lives that then affect them at the workplace?