Letting employees know they have a 'voice' in the workplace is a good way to improve satisfaction levels, according to the latest survey from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
Reported by hrmagazine.co.uk, their Employee Outlook Survey suggests there has been a decline in the satisfaction levels of some UK employees as they believe they aren't able to feed their views upwards.
For instance, 43 per cent of private sector workers trust their senior leaders while 29 per cent actively disagree with them. In addition, only 27 per cent of staff feel they are consulted about important decisions.
As a result, those taking leadership development courses may wish to practice surveying employee opinion regarding big decisions and other issues.
Speaking to workplacelaw.net, the CIPD's head of public policy Ben Willmott said: "Strong employee voice supports effective corporate governance and risk management by allowing staff to air concerns over problems, for example, with customer service, patient care, product quality or inappropriate behaviour.
"If employees feel able to feed views upwards, then ideas from the front line - where staff engage with customers or patients - are more likely to inform organisational strategy and lead to improvements in service delivery or product quality," he added.