A Seat at the Table: How Employee Influence Builds Better Workplaces

Elizabeth Eldridge
9 minutes ago
8 min read

Imagine showing up to work knowing your ideas don’t matter. Decisions affecting your job are made behind closed doors, policies appear without explanation and feedback requests feel like a formality.

Eventually, you stop offering ideas, raising concerns and pointing out problems. You keep your head down and do what you’re told.

Now imagine the opposite: you’re asked for input before changes are made, your expertise is valued and you have reasonable autonomy in how you do your work. Even when your suggestions aren’t adopted, someone explains why. You also feel safe questioning decisions, identifying risks and admitting when something isn’t working.

Which workplace is more likely to benefit from the knowledge, creativity and experience of its employees?

Involvement and Influence is the 8^th psychosocial factor (PSF) identified in Canada’s National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace, and we’re getting into the nuts and bolts in today’s edition of my ‘How to Eat an Elephant’ series where we break down the Standard into manageable bites.

What Is Involvement and Influence?

This PSF refers to the extent to which employees are included in discussions about how their work is done and decisions that affect them. At its core: People need a voice in the things that affect them, and they need to feel safe enough to use it.

It doesn’t mean employees make every decision. Leaders still need to consider budgets, legislation, safety, strategy and operational requirements. Sometimes they must make decisions employees won’t like.

The goal is to create meaningful opportunities for people to contribute their knowledge and perspectives wherever reasonable, while ensuring they can do so without fear of negative consequences.

It’s the difference between “Here’s what we’ve decided” and “Here’s the challenge we’re trying to solve. What are we missing?”

Meaningful involvement depends on both an opportunity to have a voice and the psychological safety to use it. If employees expect disagreement to be punished or concerns to be ignored, they may stay silent even when leaders ask for input.

Why Having a Voice Matters

Most people need some sense of autonomy — the feeling that they have at least some control or influence over their environment.

A demanding job can feel different when you have flexibility in how you do the work. A difficult change can feel different when you’ve had an opportunity to ask questions and raise concerns. Even a decision you disagree with can feel more acceptable when you know your perspective was genuinely considered.

When employees repeatedly feel powerless, they may become frustrated, disengaged, stressed or cynical. If speaking honestly also feels risky, they may censor themselves.

The organization loses out too. Employees may stop reporting workload issues, inefficient processes, interpersonal problems, emerging risks and mistakes. Silence doesn’t always mean everything is fine. Sometimes people have simply learned that speaking up doesn’t make a difference… or isn’t safe.

The People Closest to the Work Often Know the Most

The people doing a job every day often understand it better than someone several levels removed. They know where processes slow down, which procedures don’t work in practice, what customers complain about and where mistakes tend to happen.

But that knowledge only helps if employees feel able to share it. Raising a concern shouldn’t be interpreted as criticism, disloyalty or negativity.

Not every suggestion will be practical or possible. Still, organizations leave valuable knowledge on the table when decisions are made without involving the people doing the work.

Sometimes the best leadership question is simply “What do you think?”

Then really listen to the answer. If it won’t change the decision, explain why. A respectful explanation helps preserve trust and shows that the contribution mattered.

From “Their Workplace” to “Our Workplace”

Involvement and influence can also create psychological ownership, the feeling that something is, in some sense, ours.

Being told to implement someone else’s solution feels different from helping create it. In the first case, employees may think “this is what they decided.” In the second, they may think, “This is what we came up with.” Which scenario is likely to garner the most genuine investment from your team?

When employees can contribute, make decisions and influence how work gets done, they’re more likely to feel invested in the outcome. They notice problems, suggest improvements and care whether an initiative succeeds.

Psychological safety is part of this process. People are less likely to feel ownership if they must hide concerns, withhold ideas or pretend to agree to protect themselves. If the workplace feels imposed on them rather than shaped with them, it becomes harder to feel that it is truly theirs.

You Can’t Ask for Ownership Without Giving Influence

Organizations often tell employees to “take ownership,” “show initiative” and “think like an owner.” But if employees have little authority to make decisions, change processes or influence how work gets done, we’re asking for ownership without providing anything to own.

We can’t expect employees to take responsibility for outcomes while giving them no influence over how those outcomes are achieved, or making it unsafe to speak honestly about what isn’t working.

The better question may be, “Have we given employees something they can meaningfully own, and have we made it safe for them to speak up about it?”

Involvement Matters During Change

Organizational change is where this psychosocial factor becomes especially visible.

Imagine announcing a new scheduling system with little notice, no consultation and no explanation. Employees may become frustrated, and leadership may conclude that people simply resist change.

But resistance is often about how change happens. Employees may feel ignored, unable to question the decision or convinced that their input won’t matter.

Now imagine explaining the reasons for the change several weeks in advance, asking employees what challenges they anticipate and making adjustments where possible. Leadership may still choose the same system, but the employee experience is different.

The difference isn’t necessarily the decision. It’s the process, and whether people had a meaningful and safe opportunity to influence it.

Involvement Doesn’t Mean Consensus

Consultation isn’t the same as consensus. Employees can have influence without having final decision-making authority. Be clear about what is open for discussion and what isn’t.

For example: “This part isn’t something we can change, but we do have flexibility around how we implement it, and that’s where we’d really like your input.”

People don’t necessarily expect to get their way. They do expect honesty about whether their input can influence the outcome. They also need to know that expressing a different view won’t result in punishment or exclusion.

Psychological safety doesn’t mean every idea will be accepted. It means employees can participate honestly without fearing retaliation. A respectful explanation can make “no” psychologically safe. Repeatedly treating suggestions as foolish or inconvenient does the opposite.

Beware of the Illusion of Involvement

Asking for input without intending to consider it can be worse than not asking at all.

A common example is the employee survey that goes nowhere. Employees share concerns about workload, communication or culture, but the results disappear. No themes are acknowledged, no actions are identified and no explanation is provided.

Over time, employees may conclude that the survey was only a box-checking exercise. Participation declines, responses become less candid and people start thinking, “Why bother?”

That’s not meaningful involvement. It’s the appearance of involvement. Repeatedly ignoring input can also weaken trust and psychological safety. Employees may become less willing to ask for help, report mistakes, raise workload concerns or challenge unsafe assumptions.

If You Ask, Close the Loop

If you ask employees for input, tell them what happened with it. That doesn’t mean implementing every suggestion. It means acknowledging what you heard and explaining what happens next.

For example: “We heard three major themes in the employee survey. Here’s what we’re doing about the first two. The third isn’t something we’re able to change right now, and here’s why.”

Employees can often accept “no” more easily than silence. Closing the loop shows that participation wasn’t pointless: “We heard you. We considered what you said. Your contribution mattered.”

That builds confidence that speaking up is worthwhile, even when the outcome isn’t what employees hoped for.

Psychological Safety Matters Here, Too

Giving people opportunities to speak doesn’t mean they’ll use them. They also need to believe it’s safe. Psychological safety is the shared belief that people can ask questions, raise concerns, admit mistakes, offer ideas and respectfully disagree without fear of humiliation or punishment.

Can employees disagree with their manager without being labelled difficult? Can they identify a flaw in a new initiative without being seen as negative? Can newer or less senior employees challenge assumptions?

An organization can have every feedback mechanism imaginable, but if people don’t feel safe using them honestly, those mechanisms won’t tell leaders much.

Involvement and influence create the opportunity for employee voice. Psychological safety determines whether people feel able to use it.

A psychologically healthy workplace needs both meaningful influence and a psychologically safe culture.

Small Opportunities for Influence Matter Too

Involvement and influence can be built through everyday interactions. Some low-hanging fruit includes things like:

Ask employees how processes could be improved
Give teams reasonable flexibility in how they work
Include frontline employees when developing procedures
Invite feedback before major changes
Create advisory or working groups
Thank employees for raising risks and opportunities
Hold town halls where questions are genuinely welcomed
Respond respectfully to disagreement
Explain the reasons behind decisions
Follow up on suggestions
Treat mistakes and near misses as opportunities to learn
Explain why suggestions weren’t adopted
Check whether quieter or less senior voices are being heard
Revisit decisions when new information shows something isn’t working

These actions communicate that employees’ perspectives have value and can be shared safely.

A Few Questions Worth Asking

Think of this as a leader’s mental checklist when considering Involvement and Influence:

Do employees have meaningful opportunities to influence decisions affecting their work?
Do frontline employees have a chance to contribute their expertise?
Do people have reasonable autonomy?
When we ask for feedback, do we explain what happened with it?
Are we transparent when input can’t change a decision?
Do employees feel safe disagreeing, raising concerns or admitting mistakes?
Do we invite input early enough to influence the outcome?
When suggestions aren’t adopted, do we explain why?
Is there evidence that repeated experiences of being dismissed has weakened trust or psychological safety?

And most importantly:

Have employees stopped offering ideas because they’ve learned nothing happens when they do… or because they’ve learned it isn’t safe?

Silence isn’t always a sign that people have nothing to say. Sometimes it’s a sign they’ve stopped believing anyone wants to hear it.

Building Better Workplaces With People

Involvement and influence isn’t about giving up leadership. It’s about strengthening it.

Good leaders ask questions, recognize the expertise around them, listen, explain decisions, provide reasonable autonomy and respond constructively to disagreement.

Employees who feel heard are more likely to feel respected. Those who feel respected are more likely to contribute. Those who feel safe to speak are more likely to raise concerns before problems grow. And those who contribute are more likely to develop a sense of ownership.

The reverse is also true. When people feel ignored, trust erodes, psychological safety weakens and the culture can shift toward silence and self-protection.

Psychologically healthy workplaces aren’t created for employees. They’re created with them.

That means providing both the opportunity to influence and the safety to speak. Employee voice isn’t a one-time consultation exercise; it is built through repeated experiences of being invited, heard, respected and given a clear explanation when the answer is no.

So ask: Are we simply asking people to take ownership, or are we creating a workplace they can actually feel some ownership of?

Next week in the ‘How to Eat an Elephant’ series, we’ll explore PSF #9 on Workload Management. Ever felt like there’s just too much too do and not enough hours in the workday to get it done? Probably! This is the most common complaint of Canadian workers. We’ll explore this PSF through a psychological health and safety lens, and of course I’ll be offering up some practical strategies to help.

Thanks for joining me today. See you back her next week for PSF #9… same time, same place!

Elizabeth Eldridge is a Psychological Health & Safety Consultant based in southern New Brunswick, Canada. In addition to keynote speaking, event emceeing, consulting services and corporate training on mental health in the workplace, she supports organizations across the country on the adoption of Canada’s best practice guidelines on psychological health and safety management. She is also the Founder & President of Arpeggio Health Services which provides standardized education programs like Mental Health First Aid, The Working Mind, QPR Suicide Prevention and more.