Research & Evidence

Employee Voice Research

Healthy teams do not stall only because of weak strategy. They stall when people stop speaking honestly, when feedback gets filtered on the way up, and when leaders assume silence means alignment. The research below helps explain why communication and trust are not soft issues - they are operating conditions for performance.

The research behind the claim

The primary research we reference is The Heard and the Heard-Nots, released in 2021 by The Workforce Institute at UKG in partnership with Workplace Intelligence. The study examines a question many leaders underestimate: do employees believe their voice matters inside the organization?

One important sourcing nuance: an Aon summary of the study reported that 83% of employees feel they are not heard "fairly or equally," while UKG's own summary of the same research reports the comparable figure as 86%. We note both here intentionally. The exact number varies by summary, but the central conclusion does not: most employees do not believe their voice is heard fairly.

Key findings leaders should not ignore

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Additional context worth watching

In secondary summaries of the same research, additional figures are often cited alongside the main 83% or 86% statistic. These include reports that 75% of employees do not feel heard on critical issues such as safety, benefits, and time-off requests, and that 74% say they are more engaged or effective when they feel heard. We treat those numbers as supporting context, while keeping the primary UKG and Aon links below as the core citations.

What this means for leaders

If people on your team do not feel heard, you do not just have a morale issue. You have an execution issue. Information gets withheld. Tension moves underground. Decisions take longer. Meetings grow heavier. Trust weakens.

That is the practical reason Long Table puts so much emphasis on communication, relational trust, and helping every voice be heard. When people feel safe enough to speak honestly and leaders know how to listen well, alignment gets clearer and performance becomes easier to sustain.

The Science Behind Human Personality

Overview

The 5 Voices framework is built on the most advanced personality-powered analysis available - work aimed at unlocking the full potential of personality insights. Recent AI breakthroughs provide the sophisticated reasoning required to decode human personality, much like mapping the human genome. For the first time, this makes it possible to generate 2.94 million insights into human behavior.

Understanding personality at this depth has profound business implications. Personality is the invisible force behind every action, decision and interaction. Organizations that integrate personality-driven insights into their workflows gain an unparalleled edge - enhancing performance, engagement and decision-making at every level.

Phase I - From Data to Correlations

Peer-reviewed scientific research forms the foundation for this work. We delved into the latest research to bridge the gap between widely used personality assessments and the Big Five - the only mathematically validated model of personality. A meta-analysis of the relevant research produced a unified framework that turns subjective personality data into objective correlations.

What the Big Five is, and why it matters

The Big Five describes human personality along five broad dimensions. Researchers landed on these five because the same dimensions appear consistently across cultures, languages and decades of study. When psychologists call an assessment "validated," they usually mean it correlates in predictable ways with the Big Five.

The measurement chain behind the 5 Voices

A large peer-reviewed study (Furnham, Moutafi & Crump, 2003, N=900) measured how the MBTI maps to the Big Five, finding several strong, replicated correlations - strong enough that the field treats them as the same underlying trait. In personality research, correlations run from -1 to +1, and anything above 0.50 is treated as strong evidence that two measures point at the same trait.

The 5 Voices translates the 16 MBTI types into five practical leadership Voices - Nurturer, Creative, Guardian, Connector and Pioneer - each MBTI type mapping to a foundational Voice with the remaining four ordered behind it. That makes the psychometric foundation of the 5 Voices the foundation of the MBTI, which in turn is the Big Five:

library_booksPeer-reviewed sources (meta-analysis)

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Phase II - From Correlations to Predictions

Armed with scientifically backed correlations, an advanced AI was trained to map personality traits to real-world behavior. The machine-learning algorithm generated 2.94 million insights, revealing how people think, interact and make decisions across scenarios. This is the largest behavioral prediction engine we are aware of.