Over the past few years, we’ve seen a sharp rise in corporate activism. Companies increasingly opt to “take a stand” on social and political issues that once would have been considered taboo. Last year, Nike made quick headlines by launching an advertising campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL quarterback who was fired for refusing to kneel during the national anthem in protest of police brutality toward people of colour. We see new examples regularly of companies picking up a mic, pressuring suppliers, and engaging employees on social issues. While some company leaders seem to be genuinely driven by morality and passion, often they are responding to employee and consumer pressures. A 2018 Edelman Trust barometer study found that 84 percent of those surveyed expect companies to inform conversations on policy debates, and 56 percent have “no respect for CEOs that remain silent on important issues.”
Citizens as consumers are increasingly showing their activism by purchasing from companies that are on the right side of the issues they care about—whether that’s immigration, or the treatment of their employees. The impact of recessions on consumer pressure is less clear-cut. On the one hand, recessions may make consumers more price-conscious (and thus less likely to engage in consumer activism). On the other, recessions make companies more desperate for earnings and therefore more sensitive to the consumer activism that does occur. So, while the extent to which companies are putting their economic might behind the issues that they care about might wane in a downturn, corporate activism appears unlikely to disappear.
Employees going public to make a point about their ethical stance has the power to affect business, both negatively and positively. And it’s not limited to the tech sector. “No company today is completely immune to these types of risks, so the issue is how to minimise their potential and recover quickly if damaging events occur,” says Leslie Gaines-Ross, Chief Reputation Strategist at PR firm Weber Shandwick.
“Employees speaking out on company or workplace issues today is a reality. As more and more CEOs become activists – for example, speak publicly on social and political matters and in doing so reveal and reinforce their own corporate values – employees seem to be increasingly empowered to make their own voices heard on the subject at hand.”
A forthcoming study from global opinion research and issues management consultancy Povaddo finds that among US-based employees at Fortune 1000 companies, more than 40% say that a company’s actions on important societal issues impact their decision to work for it. More specifically, 29% say they would be less likely to continue working for their company long-term if it made zero effort to make a difference on an important societal issue.
Sounding out employees before committing to a potentially controversial contract is advantageous for organisations with workers acting like a canary in the coalmine, able to alert management to the likely effect on public and customer opinion.
As for Amazon, the company’s response has involved trying to explain the very limited nature of its work with ICE, both to the public and to employees. Microsoft has taken a similar tack, claiming that the ICE contract relates to services like email and calendar rather than facial recognition.
So far, the tactics seem to be working, with staff at each firm having stepped down their protests. This is despite the fact that, with the exception of Google, none of the companies has promised to avoid controversial contracts completely. It seems that open dialogue has been enough to calm most fears.
Within Google, employees are taking their activism in new directions, including experiments that could yield the seeds of a union — although how the average tech worker might expect to benefit from unionizing is far from obvious. One group of non-staff workers has already voted to unionize. Some of the organizers have split off to take on other issues, including fighting mandatory arbitration at the federal level.
The walkout and its aftermath have also altered the formerly easygoing relationship between Google’s executive leadership and its rank-and-file. In the past, workers felt Google’s much-admired culture was one that not just encouraged but at times rewarded them for taking stances on controversial topics. Even more than other tech companies, Google made space for its people to pursue activism through their jobs. Gestures such as co-founder Sergey Brin’s airport protest against the Trump travel ban and the company’s sponsorship of San Francisco’s annual Pride parade sent a message that advocacy under Google’s imprimatur was not just a privilege but a right.
Now, current and former employees say, the company has grown cagier and less transparent about how it responds to worker concerns and more restrictive in the types of political speech it countenances on the job. Google has also begun to employ tactics seen as having the effect of dividing workers and clamping down on the kinds of conversations that fuel workplace activism.
C-suites need to communicate to employees that they’re aware of the important issues facing society and that these topics are on the company’s radar. In the face of a controversial business decision, swift, decisive and open engagement from the top with workers is immensely critical.
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