In many cultures, silence is a sign of hierarchy or respect. Sometimes, silence provides space so others can be heard. But there’s another side of silence people don’t talk about—silence culture. Silence culture and its effects create quantifiable risk and revenue loss for organizations. However, the upside of enabling, and preparing, for the use of employee and customer voice can be significant.
What is silence culture?
Silence culture is an environment where speaking up is neither encouraged nor rewarded. Within silence culture, speaking up carries a great deal of perceived or real consequences for employees. So, questions are not asked and risks are not pointed out. You may have heard silence culture referred to as “not making waves.”
What problems are caused by silence culture?
The problems caused by lack of disclosure can be significant. Our founder, Diane Dye, created the ID Framework for Non-Disclosure Risk, which is proprietary to People Risk Consulting, to explain the four types of disclosure silence culture discourages. This teaching framework has four components.
- Incident Disclosure
- Instructional Needs Disclosure
- Idea Disclosure
- Identity Disclosure
Incident Disclosure
Definition: The likelihood an individual would disclose the occurrence of an incident.
Problem: 50% of workplace injuries go unreported. Direct costs include workers’ compensation payments, medical expenses, and costs for legal services (OSHA, 2024). Delayed reporting and care for workplace injury can result in fines in some states or worsening of the condition including damage to tools, equipment, and other property (WCF Insurance, nd). It can also result in time lost for replacing damaged equipment, spoiled work, and loss of production.
What You Might See: Physical safety risks, legal risks, cover up of costly mistakes, waterfall effect of a series of small incidents leading to larger, and more costly, failures.
Who Cares: This is often the biggest focus organizations have when it comes to the use of employee or customer voice in the workplace. Safety managers, risk managers, occupational health and safety care about this.
Instructional Needs Disclosure
Definition: The likelihood an individual would disclose their need for instruction.
Problem: Poor employee training and lack of identification of gaps in understanding can lead to low productivity, inefficiency, poor customer service, high turnover, and low-quality outputs of services and products (The Training Associates, 2022)
What You Might See: Decreased customer satisfaction, increased customer churn, employee turnover, workplace injury
Who Cares: Learning and Development functions focus on closing gaps in instructional needs, although some current performance management processes and levels of psychological safety within business units do not support individual disclosure of instructional needs until a costly mistake is made and a reactive response is necessary. Operations executives also care if people, process, and systems align.
Idea Disclosure
Definition: The likelihood an individual would disclose an idea or the disagreement with an idea.
Problem: According to a Gallup survey, disengaged employees cost U.S. companies between $450 billion to $550 billion annually in lost productivity and is an $8.8 trillion global problem. Sustained lack of innovation can lead to high employee turnover, increased recruitment costs, and a negative impact on bottom-line results. Disengaged employees are less likely to go the extra mile for customers, leading to subpar customer experiences.
What You Might See: Lack of data on voice of the employee (VOE) or voice of the customer (VOC), stunted innovation, employee turnover, employees leaving to take their ideas to the competition, loss of competitive advantage, failure to speak up about detrimental ideas or plans that could create incidents
Who Cares: CEO, Chief Customer Officer, human resources executives, Chief Revenue Officer, risk management, change management
Identity Disclosure
Definition: The likelihood an individual would disclose or defend their identity.
Problem: Identity problems in the workplace can include identity conflicts, social identity (belonging or lack thereof), and identity crisis. It can involve a lack of clarity about personal role or organizational culture alignment including one’s values, skills, interests, or sense of self. People problems spurring from identity are costly to organizations.
What You Might See: Employee withdrawal, disengagement, behavioral concerns, employee retention problems, increased complaints and investigation
Who Cares: Human Resources leaders, DE&I executives, risk managers interested in harassment, and other human issues
If you would like to understand the ID Framework for Non-Disclosure Risk and how PRC can help you apply it to your organization, connect with us on a quick inquiry call. Workshops, leadership training, and assessment services are available.
People Risk Consulting (PRC) is a human capital risk management and change management consulting firm located in San Antonio, Texas. PRC helps leaders in service-focused industries mitigate people risk by conducting third-party people-centric risk analysis and employee needs assessments. PRC analyzes and uses this data alongside best practice to make strategic recommendations to address organizational problems related to change and employee risk. The firm works alongside leaders to develop risk plans, change plans, and strategic plans to drive the human element of continuous improvement. PRC provides technical assistance, education, training, and trusted partner resources to aid with execution. PRC is a strategic partner of TriNet, Marsh McClennan Agency, Cloud Tech Gurus, Predictive Index, and Motivosity.
