Voiceless at Work: When Workers Are Shut Out of Pandemic-Era Decisions
When Canadian workers were excluded from workplace decisions during the first year of the pandemic, their mental health suffered. New C-QWELS panel evidence shows voicelessness erodes workers' sense of mastery — and that loss of control is what drives the rise in distress and anger.
When workers don't have a voice
The COVID-19 pandemic forced employers to make fast decisions: layoffs, restructuring, remote work, business closures. Many workers had little to no say in those decisions. We call this voicelessness — the experience of not being asked for input and of having concerns go unheard before decisions are made.
We wanted to know: does being voiceless at work actually make people feel worse? And if so, why? We followed more than two thousand Canadian workers across five points in time to find out.
What we studied
We drew on the Canadian Quality of Work and Economic Life Study (C-QWELS), a panel of Canadian workers fielded by Schieman with Angus Reid Global. The analytic sample is 2,119 workers tracked across five survey waves between March 2020 and April 2021 — a 13-month window that covered pandemic onset, reopening, the second wave, holiday lockdowns, and the start of the vaccine rollout.
Two mental-health outcomes anchor the study: psychological distress (feeling anxious, nervous, sad, or hopeless) and anger (feeling frustrated, irritable, or lashing out). Because we followed the same workers over time, we could hold each person's stable traits constant — personality, pre-existing health, anything that doesn't change inside a person across the year — so what we see is each worker's own change in mental health as their experience of voicelessness changes.
How we measured this
What we found
The results were clear: workers who experienced more voicelessness reported higher levels of psychological distress and anger. These effects held up after accounting for stable individual characteristics through the within-person design, and after adjusting for job autonomy, work hours, and other time-varying job characteristics.
The pattern is hard to miss: even a single work stressor, voicelessness on its own, clearly tracked with higher distress and anger, after accounting for individual differences and other job conditions that shift over time.
“Even a single work stressor, voicelessness on its own, clearly tracked with higher distress and anger.”
Why? Sense of mastery is the link
We then asked why voicelessness affects mental health. The key mechanism we identified is sense of mastery — a person's belief that they have control over what happens in their life. When workers are shut out of decisions, that belief is chipped away, and the loss of perceived control is what drives poorer mental health.
For distress: mastery fully accounts for the link, meaning voicelessness hurts mental health precisely because it erodes workers' sense of control. For anger: mastery explains part of the link, but voicelessness also contributes to anger through additional pathways not fully captured by perceived control alone.
What about social status?
We also tested whether voicelessness shifts how workers rank themselves on a broader social ladder. Where people place themselves in society matters for health on its own, and one plausible story is that being shut out of decisions chips away at where workers see themselves standing.
We did not find consistent evidence for that pathway. Where people place themselves on the social ladder moves on its own clock. It is not the workhorse carrying voicelessness into worse mental health. Mastery is.
What this means: three recommendations
Three evidence-based suggestions follow for workplaces and workers, drawn from the paper's discussion. None of them require a wholesale reorganization. They do require taking employee voice seriously as something more than a morale variable.
Build real consultation into how decisions get made
The data show that voicelessness is a genuine workplace stressor — not just a morale issue. Before significant decisions (scheduling changes, restructuring, new policies), build in structured opportunities for employee input: surveys, team meetings, anonymous feedback channels. The key word is real — token consultation where feedback goes nowhere may be worse than no consultation at all. Make sure employees see that their input matters.
Protect and rebuild employees' sense of control
Our findings point to mastery — the belief that you can influence your own life — as the key link between voicelessness and poor mental health. Employers can help by giving workers more control over their day-to-day tasks and by being transparent about decisions. Workers can benefit from identifying areas of their work where they do have agency, and from programs that support confidence and coping — such as stress-management resources or employee assistance programs.
Pay special attention during times of rapid change
This study was conducted during the first year of the pandemic — a period of extraordinary organizational upheaval. Our findings suggest that voicelessness is especially damaging during periods of uncertainty, when stakes are high and people feel least in control. Organizations facing major transitions (mergers, restructuring, policy shifts) should treat employee voice not as a nice-to-have but as a core part of managing change responsibly. For workers navigating those transitions, advocating for input — formally or informally — may also protect wellbeing.
Data and method
All estimates are drawn from C-QWELS, a nationally representative panel of Canadian workers fielded with Angus Reid Global from March 2020 through April 2021. The analytic sample is 2,119 workers present across all five waves.
Outcomes are measured by validated psychological-distress and anger items. Voicelessness is captured at each wave from items asking how often the worker is consulted before decisions and feels that their concerns are heard. Following the same workers over time isolates each worker's own change. Full details and robustness checks are reported in the parent paper.
Estimates are drawn from the C-QWELS pandemic-period panel, fielded with Angus Reid Global. The analytic sample is 2,119 Canadian workers present across all five waves.