Opportunities to address employee voice in health care providers: A scoping review

Abstract

Abstract Background: Employees’ decision to speak up or to stay silent can have implications for health care providers, employees and people who need care. As a result, a shift is needed from blindly following guidelines to implementing a sustainable proactive organizational culture in which employees can evaluate their work environment and take advantage of growth opportunities. Employee voice refers to all organizational structures, mechanisms or practices in which employees participate and through which they try to influence their work and the performance of their organization. Aims and objective: This scoping review aims to provide an overview of the literature and research on opportunities to address employee voice in health care providers. The review will provide insights into what research already exists in health care related to employee voice and discuss the described opportunities in an attempt to improve employee voice. The results will also form the basis of the interview guide for a case study, ADVICE. Methods: The search was conducted from September 2022 to April 2023 in the following databases: MEDLINE via PubMed, CINHAL via EBSCO, Scopus via Elsevier, Wiley/Web of Science and Cochrane Library. The search results were imported into the COVIDENCE program and screened by two researchers separately. We used the following search terms: employee voice, employee participation, employee engagement, speaking up, opportunities and health-care provider. Furthermore, the search terms and their synonyms are linked to search strings using Boolean operators dependent on the databases, as well as Mesh terms. The review followed the PRISMA-ScR guidelines. Results: We identified 951 studies in five databases and via citation tracking. After we removed 102 duplicates and screening 839 titles and abstracts, 23 full texts were assessed. According to our inclusion and exclusion criteria, we included 10 studies. Conclusions: Opportunities to address employee voice are not effective on their own, they need to be seen in a wider context. Employees need to learn how to raise their concerns, and managers need to learn how to empower employees to speak up and use the improvements to change the work environment and improve patient outcomes.