ICYMI: Corporate activism is inevitable, Microsoft is disconnected
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In case you missed itâŠ
1. An Agreeable President Is Not Enough
Back in October I wrote What President Biden Will Mean for Internal Comms, in which I argued a Biden administration would make storytelling around values even more difficult. Why? Because it was too easy to take a stance against President Trump.
Coming out against Trumpâs xenophobic, homophobic, and racist comments was a no-brainer for any CEO and organization.
The Biden White House is pretty much the opposite of Trump: anti-racist, pro-immigrant, pro-climate science, etc. And generally, Biden hasnât taken stances that trigger visceral reactions from socially responsible corporate leaders, employees, and consumers. (Yet.)
Yet employees and consumers are not content with an agreeable president.
From the inside employees will push their employers to take stances on specific policy, legislation, and Supreme Court cases.
Consumers will add pressure from the outside.
We see it happening now with regressive voting legislation in Georgia and other states. Itâs only a matter of time before employees join consumers in demanding action that matches their political stances.
Dozens of Black business leaders, including the C.E.O. of Merck and the former head of American Express, urged corporations to fight a wave of Republican-backed bills that would limit voting access.
Delta Airlineâs C.E.O. was forced to address employees, âI need to make it crystal clear that the final bill is unacceptable and does not match Deltaâs values.â (CNN)
You can bet that employees at Home Depot, Coca-Cola, and other Georgia-based companies are facing internal backlash for not standing up against the anti-democratic legislation. (Not to mention calls for consumer boycotts.)
Here are many CEO statements about the voting law in Georgia from companies like Google, Patagonia, Facebook, Mailchimp, Bank of America, Cisco, and more.
State officials may be current targets, but soon the Biden administration and federal government will be in activistsâ sights. Some companies are getting ahead of the progressive game.
The C.E.O. of Levi Strauss urged Congress to pass a bill giving U.S. workers 12 weeks of paid time off for health care: âNot mandating paid leave is inexcusable.â (CNN)
2. Get Your Playbooks Ready
Bidenâs election will empower employees to move their employers from making value statements to taking value actions.
Internal Comms is business-critical to ensuring the companyâs internal messages reflect its external positions and ensuring that employees know what any changes mean for the business and their paychecks, and what meaning the value stance brings to their work.
Forums and outlets to discuss contentious issuesâlike pending, regressive voting legislation in Georgia, Texas, and other statesâmust be created internally, as well as be managed, monitored, and measured.
One of the reasons you donât see massive walkouts or calls for unions at Facebook, despite many employees being upset with the companyâs lack of political action, is that Mark Zuckerberg continues to have weekly town hall meetings in which he addresses employeesâ concerns.
Editorial series and storytelling will be required to give focus and consistency to the companyâs values.
You cannot avoid talking about difficult issues at work.
Employees donât stop being Black or Conservative or Immigrant or living in wildfire zones when they clock in.
Is your internal comms strategy ready for four years of Biden?
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3. Microsoft Is Disconnected
Throughout the past year, Microsoftâs head of people analytics, Dawn Klinghoffer, and her team studied the impact of remote work on Microsoftâs more than 150,000 employees, and daily survey results quantify this challenge all too clearly.
Microsoft saw employee reporting about feeling connected decline, though not in a straight line, from 91% in April 2020 â its baseline for this data point as it did not track it pre-Covid. Connectedness fell to 75% by November 2020; was at 79% in December 2020; and then fell as low as 71% in February of this year.
âOur data tell us that our employees need us to focus on the basics first, like work-life balance and prioritization,â says Kathleen Hogan, Microsoftâs chief people officer.
Watch an interview with Hogan on CNBC.
4. Industry News
Staffbase, which recently merged with Bananatag, just raised $145 million in a funding round (TechCrunch). Is an IPO in the works?
Haystack Inc. emerged from stealth mode to reveal a modern intranet platform that it says can help enterprises provide better security for their remote workforces (SiliconANGLE).
Unsplash has been acquired by Getty Images (Unsplash).
Walmart's Michelle Malashock has been tapped to lead internal comms at General Mills (PRovoke).
Lippe Taylor Group, an earned marketing and digital communications agency, acquired Cheer Partners, an employee experience agency (PR Newswire).
Remote working is here to stay: JPMorgan Chase, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Salesforce are subleasing their office space (WSJ).
69% of employers expect at least half of their employees to work remotely some of the time even after a full vaccination program is in place (Gartner).
5. Donât Take Your Walk for Granted
Since the pandemic started my fiancĂ©e and I have taken afternoon and evening walks to get some fresh air, exercise, talk, restore a sense of sanity, and see actual humans who donât live in Zoom boxes.
My short afternoon walk thinks Iâm putting too much pressure on it:
Now, Iâm both your leisure activity and your only form of exercise. Iâm the last thing tethering you to reality, yet your only way of escaping it. Iâm the singular effort you make to maintain your sanity, and your sole means of experiencing joy, hope, and happiness. It feels as if Iâm your lover, friend, and therapist all wrapped into one and, frankly, itâs making me uncomfortable.
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Disclaimer: Besides running Mister Editorial, I work in employee comms at Splunk. The views in this newsletter are my own.
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