Predictors of employee silence and its impact on work engagement

Abstract

Upward communication and engaged employees are essential ingredients for the smooth functioning of any human organization. Unfortunately, in many organizations, employees remain silent even though they have something important to say to their authorities, which causes serious consequences to the organization as well as for employees. Employee silence means intentionally not expressing the existing problems, not giving feedback on setbacks, not making useful suggestions, not providing constructive criticisms about employee’s evaluations of his or her organizational circumstances to persons who are perceived to be capable of effecting change. Misinterpreted and unaddressed silence might result in long lasting, hidden conflicts that become burden for change implementation and long-lasting dissatisfaction. As a result of employee silence, problematic situations or developments may go unnoticed and also it may affect work engagement. If employee silence is not addressed properly in an educational institution, it will affect the overall system. The purpose of the present study is: - to explore and understand whether employee silence exists among college teachers in the Kerala context, to construct an instrument to assess employee silence among teachers in Kerala context, to identify the predictors of employee silence, and to examine the impact of predictors of employee silence on Work engagement. The study included two phases-qualitative phase and quantitative phase. The main objective of phase I was to examine whether college teachers in Kerala experience employee silence, explore the reasons for remaining silent, and construct a standardized instrument to assess employee silence among college teachers in Kerala. In phase I, based on convenient sampling,30 college teachers were selected and interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule and the data was content analyzed. In the second phase, the researcher attempted to determine the predictive capacity of these variables, which were initially identified as the contributors of employee silence by the investigator through different processes like preliminary exploration and reviewing of related literature on employee silence. Then studied the impact of predictors of employee silence on work engagement. The participants of the study included 344 college teachers from aided, government, and Self-financing Arts and science colleges with an age range between 25 and 60. Instruments used in the study include Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzalez-Roma & Bakker.,2002),Job Behaviour Index, Employee silence scale (developed by the investigator and the supervising teacher). Then thepredictors of employee silence were found using regression analysis. The statistical analysis used includes regression, ANOVA, scheffe’s test and correlation. Results revealed that the majority of the college teachers in Kerala experience employee silence and identified assertiveness, perceived organizational support, implicit voice theories, interactive justice, self-confidence, perceived organizational politics and psychological safety as significant predictors of employee silence. Among the predictors, self-confidence, interactive justice, and perceived organizational support were found to have a significant impact on Work engagement. Implications and scope of the study are discussed.