Power to the people? The rise of employee activism

Words / Megan Reitz

More and more, we’re seeing managers – not just senior executives – getting drawn into subject areas well beyond the traditional remit of team performance and quarterly targets.

My research (with John Higgins) over the past couple of years has focused on the rise of employee activism and how managers should respond. We’ve also looked at how to feel more comfortable with, and even curious about, the “activist” conversations that are steadily increasing in volume inside and outside of organisations.

What’s behind the rise in employee activism?

A constellation of factors has come together and instigated a change in the conversations that take place in the workplace – and those factors aren’t going away.

First, there are the big pronouncements. Stimulated by global events and shareholder pressure, organisations have started making commitments on topics such as their carbon footprints and diversity targets. Employees – in particular millennials and Gen Zs – listen intently to these and will speak up if they see no action. Social media and platforms such as Organise are helping them do this collectively and anonymously. This expands the reach of the message and reduces the risk to the individual employee activist.

Take Waterstones. The bookshop chain was criticised for not sharing profits sufficiently with black authors and was petitioned by employees to financially support the Black Lives Matter movement. Meanwhile, in the US, some employees quit the software company Basecamp after it banned political conversations at work. The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase also experienced employee walkouts when it mishandled its internal conversation following the murder of George Floyd. In all these cases, leaders quickly found themselves facing a reputational as well as a talent crisis.

Another reason why the pressure on corporate leaders has intensified is that many employees no longer trust governments and institutions such as trade unions to deal with societal and environmental issues.

Finally, an increased focus on diversity, equity and inclusion means that a wider variety of topics is seen as important and relevant in the workplace.

Why now for employee activism?

“Activism” is a loaded term. We know this because we’ve asked thousands of people what they associate with the term. They say everything from “passion”, “purpose” and “change” to “violence”, “idealism” and “protest”. What one person considers essential activism another considers destructively rebellious behaviour. Our definition of employee activism is: “Voices of difference that challenge the status quo as to who gets heard and/or what should be included in the formal organisational agenda”.

Another reason why the pressure on corporate leaders has intensified is that many employees no longer trust governments and institutions

Megan Reitz is professor of leadership and dialogue at Hult International Business School. Her 2019 book Speak Up (with John Higgins) was shortlisted for the 2020 CMI Management Book of the Year Award

Six ways managers (tend to) respond to employee activism

Managers are on the front line dealing with activist voices in their teams on a day-to-day basis. We’ve identified six classic approaches that they tend to take. Which have you experienced and which do you respond with?

NON-EXISTENT: Employee activism is simply off the agenda.

SUPPRESSION: Activist voices are threatened or banned overtly or more subtly.

FACADISM: Leaders make pronouncements but show little commitment.

DEFENSIVE ENGAGEMENT: The minimum action is taken – for example “counting the numbers” for a diversity initiative.

DIALOGIC ENGAGEMENT: Leaders genuinely engage and want to learn. Decision-making is opened up on what needs to be done.

STIMULATING ACTIVISM: Leaders specifically recruit, recognise and support activists, usually regarding themselves and their organisation as agents of change. Two examples here are ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s and the outdoor clothing company Patagonia.

Which response you choose depends on all sorts of factors: where power is seen to sit within the organisational hierarchy, whether the issue directly concerns the manager or organisation, whether managers and their organisations regard themselves as activists, whether other stakeholders are exerting pressure to act in a particular way, and how much bandwidth there is to take on this broader remit alongside the day job.

Get comfortable with the uncomfortable

Managers can’t be expected to take a stand on every issue, so how do you determine what’s “in” (if anything) and what’s “out”? Well, there are a few different approaches...

Some leaders and managers (as in the Coinbase and Basecamp examples) move to ban “political conversations”, to attempt to demarcate what can and what can’t be talked about. Or they claim that they are “apolitical” and need to stay out of particular conversations (as the Wayfair CEO did in the US, responding to an employee walkout over sales to the controversial detention centres at the US border).

This path contains two big traps. First, it’s impossible to draw a line (that everyone understands, let alone agrees with) between what’s acceptable and relevant to speak about in the workplace and what isn’t. Second, suppressing differences and challenges doesn’t get rid of them – they are simply likely to pop up in other ways, most likely in dysfunctional behaviour or team members deciding to leave.

An alternative path is to engage with employees and determine with them any action that should be taken. A global retailer I’ve worked with claims to take this stance. It has built a team of employees from across the organisation, specifically charged with working through the often thorny questions of how to respond to activist issues. One example was whether to drop a key supplier embroiled in the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. This had huge consequences for the organisation’s relationships with Chinese customers.

Geopolitical flashpoints can affect workplaces thousands of miles away

If you want to avoid “facadism”, managers must be willing to do four interrelated things. Each may feel scary and utterly out of the ordinary:

1) STEP OUT OF THE “EXPERT” ROLE

The common narrative is that managers and leaders should be the experts; they need to be in control and know what to do. While this is sometimes valid, it can get in the way when managers engage in topics outside their traditional territory. Stepping out of the “expert” role means being comfortable in not knowing and in being prepared to share decision-making. It’s much easier to say than to do in most cases.

2) BE GENUINELY CURIOUS

There are no pragmatic “Five steps to become more curious” to offer here. Rather, curiosity is an orientation, even a philosophy. It’s about having a desire to learn and understand, a fascination with the experience of others. Linked with the first point, this requires managers to inquire, not simply to advocate.

3) HELP OTHERS TO SPEAK UP

Managers are more intimidating than they realise. You may think of yourself as approachable, but the more senior you are, the more you are likely to be in an “optimism bubble” where you overestimate the degree to which others speak up to you. This means you underestimate the challenges your employees face. Helping them to speak up means you take care to provide them with the opportunity, the environment and the signals that help them to feel psychologically safe.

4) MAKE MISTAKES

If you move into new experiences, then you must expect to make mistakes. We cannot expect ourselves or others to enter into challenging conversations without being inarticulate or even offending others. One senior manager even confided in us that he felt there was no space to be “clumsy” amid his organisation’s zero-tolerance policy, so he stayed silent and withdrew.

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Whether it’s climate change, racism, gender equality or human rights, managers will need to navigate topics that they haven’t been presented with previously. You won’t be able to bat these away with “Oh, that’s not work-related”.

As a manager, you will choose to ignore, feign interest in, or genuinely engage with these issues – and the team members to whom they matter so much. All these responses are fraught with danger. Getting off the fence is as risky as trying to stay on it. But the risks of ignoring or pretending seem increasingly untenable.