Bridging the Gap: Measuring the Impact of Worker Voice on Job-Related Outcomes

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The purpose of this study was to review the contemporary landscape of worker voice research and to empirically test a reliable measure of worker voice for use in future job quality surveys. We reviewed the literature on existing worker voice measures, conducted two different surveys with U.S. workers, and tested different voice measures to understand their associations with various job-related outcomes.

Our work develops a framework that captures important elements of worker voice, namely voice that captures both the interests of workers and employers. In this report we:
• Summarize the contemporary landscape of voice research in relation to job quality.
• Develop and test a reliable and conceptually valid measure of worker voice we call the voice gap measure (the gap in how much say a worker feels they ought to have and how much say they actually have) that is suitable for use in future job quality research.
• Provide exploratory analyses showing how our measure of voice gap is associated with job-related outcomes.

Our empirical findings reveal that:
• Out of several different voice measures, the voice gap measure meets rigorous standards for validity testing.
• Workers see a distinction between having voice gap on issues related to their own interests and the interests of their organization.
• Even after controlling for different elements of job quality, voice gap is still statistically associated with various job-related outcomes. Specifically, voice gap on workers issue is significantly associated with job-related outcomes, while voice gap on organizations’ issues is not significantly associated with those outcomes.

Based on these results, we recommend that our measure of voice gap be used in future surveys to measure voice as one dimension of job quality. We also recommend further research aimed at developing a usable and reliable measure to measure the extent to which voice behaviors will result in a meaningful change at work (e.g., voice impact), which is another missing aspect of worker voice.