I like what you are saying, but only if i feel safe: Psychological safety moderates the relationship between voice and perceived contribution to healthcare team effectiveness

Understanding Employee Voice Behavior Through the Use of Digital Voice Channel in Long-Term Care: Protocol for an Embedded Multiple-Case Study

BACKGROUND

Specific challenges in the health care sector, such as hierarchical structures, shortages of nursing staff, and high turnover of nursing staff, can be addressed by a change process of organizational culture into shared governance. Data from business organizations show that the use of digital voice channels provides employee voice. This approach makes concrete the opportunity for employees to raise their voices by answering surveys and making comments in an anonymous forum, which subsequently positively influences staff turnover and sick leave. Since there is no clear understanding of how a digital voice channel can be used in long-term care to address employee voice, a research gap has been identified.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of ADVICE (Understanding Employee Voice Behavior; the acronym for this study) is to understand how the use of a digital voice channel performs in long-term care (residential long-term care and home care facilities). The aim of this study is to understand how the digital voice channel can support staff in making their voices heard and to see what managers need to use the voice channel to change the work environment.

METHODS

An embedded multiple-case study will be used to explore the experiences of 2 health care providers who have already implemented a digital voice channel. ADVICE is organized into two main phases: (1) a scoping review and (2) an embedded multiple-case study. For this purpose, focus group interviews with employees, discursive-dialogical interviews with managers, meeting protocols, and data from the digital voice channel will be analyzed. First, all units of analysis from every embedded unit will be separately analyzed and then comprehensively analyzed to obtain a case vignette from every embedded unit (within-analysis). In the second stage, the analyzed data from the embedded units will be compared with each other in a comparative analysis (cross-analysis).

RESULTS

The results will provide insight into how digital voice channels can be used in long-term care to address employee voice. We expect to find how the digital voice channel can empower nurses to speak up and, consequently, create a better work environment. Data collection began in August 2023, and from a current perspective, the first results are expected in summer 2024.

CONCLUSIONS

In summary, the results may help to better understand the use of a digital voice channel in the health care sector and its transformative potential for leadership. At the organizational level, research can help to improve the attractiveness of the workplace by understanding how to give employees a voice.

INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID)

PRR1-10.2196/48601.

How to enrich team research in healthcare by considering five theoretical perspectives

The aim of this paper is to inspire team research to apply diverse and unconventional perspectives to study team dynamics and performance in healthcare settings. To illustrate that using multiple perspectives can yield valuable insights, we examine a segment of a team interaction during a heart-surgery, using five distinct interdisciplinary perspectives known from small group research: the psychodynamic, functional, conflict-power-status, temporal, and social identity perspectives. We briefly describe each theoretical perspective, discuss its application to study healthcare teams, and present possible research questions for the segment at hand using the respective perspective. We also highlight the benefits and challenges associated with employing these diverse approaches and explore how they can be integrated to analyze team processes in health care. Finally, we offer our own insights and opinions on the integration of these approaches, as well as the types of data required to conduct such analyses. We also point to further research avenues and highlight the benefits associated with employing these diverse approaches. Finally, we offer our own insights and opinions on the integration of these approaches, as well as the types of data required to conduct such analyses.