87% of respondents report that employees have either a strong or moderate degree of influence within their organisations. Within this, 27% say that they have a strong influence, with feedback actively sought and consistently shaping decisions, while a further 60% report a more moderate level of influence, as feedback is considered and sometimes reflected in decisions.
By contrast, only a small minority report limited (11%), minimal (1%), or no (1%) employee influence.
At first glance, this appears encouraging. The data suggests that most organisations now accept the importance of employee voice and have moved away from models in which decisions are made entirely by leadership without staff involvement. Listening to employees has therefore become part of the expected architecture of workplace culture.
This is reinforced by Edelman’s Trust at Work special report, which finds that 82% of employees globally see the ability to give input and feedback to management as a strong expectation or dealbreaker when considering a job.
The gap between ‘having a voice’ and ‘having influence’
An even more interesting signal, however, lies in the distinction between ‘voice’ and ‘influence’.
In our data, most organisations report some form of employee input, and just over a quarter say that feedback clearly shapes decisions. The largest group sits in the middle: employees have a moderate influence, and their views are considered, but only sometimes reflected in decision-making. Deloitte’s 2025 Global Human Capital Trends report points to a similar gap: only about a third of workers say they feel empowered to provide feedback about how to make their work more valuable, compared with 74% of managers.
This suggests that many employers may have created mechanisms for listening, without yet fully embedding employee voice into decision-making, governance, and organisational change.
Why this matters more now
The world of work is becoming increasingly complex, volatile, and dependent on trust, while organisations are asking employees to adapt to new technologies, new ways of working, shifting skills requirements, greater uncertainty, and continued organisational transformation. Deloitte’s 2026 Global Human Capital Trends survey underlines the pressure this creates, finding that one-third of workers experienced no less than 15 major changes in the past year alone, with negative effects on wellbeing, workload and confidence.
Changes cannot be delivered effectively through top-down communication alone but require meaningful engagement from the people closest to the work itself.
Voice as a source of intelligence
Employee voice is therefore more than a cultural or engagement issue, as it is a true source of organisational intelligence: staff often understand operational friction, customer needs, workflow problems, technology limitations, and cultural risks before these become visible at leadership level. In this context, voice becomes a means of identifying weak signals, testing assumptions, and proactively improving the quality of decision-making.
There is also a legitimacy dimension: when employees feel that change is being imposed on them, rather than shaped with them, even the best initiatives can encounter resistance. Gartner’s Future of Work Trends for 2026 report reinforces this directly, indicating that co-creation increases trust and, consequently, the likelihood that workers and managers will implement change successfully.
A critical factor in transformation agendas
This is particularly important in areas such as AI adoption, workforce redesign, hybrid working, skills transformation, and culture change. These are not purely technical projects, but depend on how people experience work day-to-day, and on whether they believe that organisational decisions are credible and fair.
According to the International Labour Organisation’s 2025 working paper on AI and algorithmic management, employee voice will be the driving force for defining what the human-AI partnership should look like. Technologies, the research concludes, are more likely to be deployed effectively where workers have voice in, and oversight over, how digital tools are used to organise work.
Implications for employers
The challenge for employers is no longer simply to create more opportunities for employees to speak: most organisations already have engagement platforms and informal feedback channels. The more important question is whether these mechanisms yield any real influence.
This doesn’t mean that every decision can or should be made collectively. Leadership remains responsible for setting direction and taking difficult decisions, but whenever organisations seek employee input, they need to be clear about how that input will be used, what decisions it can shape, and where the boundaries of influence lie.
Closing this loop is critical, especially as employees are more likely to engage with feedback processes when they can see visible consequences. Without these, employee voice risks becoming performative, creating frustration rather than trust.
Leading organisations are starting to treat employee voice as part of organisational capability, rather than a simple engagement exercise. This means building it into governance, change programmes, leadership behaviours, and workforce planning, while ensuring that managers are equipped to receive feedback, interpret it constructively, and translate it into action.
More broadly, influence is becoming an increasingly important part of the employment relationship. Employees are less likely to be satisfied with being passive recipients of decisions made elsewhere, and want to understand, contribute, and shape the environments in which they work.
This signal sits at the heart of the wider story told by the Future@Work 2026 report: culture, trust, and participation are becoming increasingly central to organisational resilience. For the future of work, the employers best placed to navigate this shift will be those that move beyond listening as a process, and instead treat employee voice as a strategic source of insight, legitimacy, and long-term value.