Employee voice and silence as mechanisms to regulate job insecurity perceptions during COVID-19

As employers worldwide grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, employees are faced with a highly uncertain work environment and, consequently, high levels of job insecurity perceptions. This study aims to fill an existing gap in the literature by examining what employees do to manage this uncertainty and whether these actions are effective at reducing subsequent job insecurity perceptions. Using uncertainty management and reduction theories as a guiding framework, we propose employee voice and silence as possible behavioral responses to manage uncertainty. We also propose that informational justice perceptions will influence which course of action employees will take to manage this uncertainty. Our study of 302 employees over a three-week period shows that perceptions of high job insecurity motivate individuals to seek out ways to reduce uncertainty. Our results reveal that people generally use silence, rather than voice, to manage job uncertainty. This exacerbates the situation by further increasing subsequent insecurity perceptions. We find, however, that informational justice “breaks” this vicious cycle by reducing one’s inclination to remain silent. We discuss the implications of our findings in the context of the current pandemic, and their implication for theory and practice more generally.