There’s no doubt about it – people are becoming more vocal and as an employer you ignore them at your peril.
Have you been following the news about Brewdog?
On Thursday 10 June an open letter was published from former BrewDog staff criticising the brand for being a “cult of personality” first and a safe place to work a distant second. The letter has to date has been signed by more than 100 people including 45 who chose not to be named publicly “who did not feel safe to include either their names or initials”. It cites, among other things, “genuine safety concerns” in addition to a culture that prioritised image over the wellbeing of its staff.
A snap poll for The Drum carried out on the day the letter hit headlines clearly demonstrated that interest in the story was starting to spread beyond the band of the craft beer industry. Conducted by OnePulse, it found that a third of people were already aware of the open letter posted on Twitter (34%) and that half of those polled (50.2%) said the letter had changed their opinion of BrewDog for the worse.
Extract from The Drum 11 June 2021 (read full article)
Hot on the heels of Basecamp, Wayfair, Google and Amazon, Brewdog is learning the hard way that employee activism is on the rise.
Employees have increasingly high expectations of their employers; they’re also placing their trust in you to support them on workplace, environmental, political and social issues that are affecting their lives (inside and outside of work). This is a broad agenda ranging from wellbeing and mental health to diversity and climate change. If there is too big a gap between what your employees expect and what you do (especially if you make a commitment to do it) then you risk undermining trust and damaging employee engagement. As Basecamp discovered, people don’t like it if you try to avoid your responsibility either.
Employee activism is what people do when their employer doesn’t meet their expectations. It’s what they do when;
- They have been mistreated or discriminated in some way
- They want to express their dissatisfaction
- They think their employer should be doing more or better
AND
- Employees don’t feel they have a voice or any influence over their employer, or that their voice will be heard
OR
- The risks of speaking up are too great so they stay silent (or anonymous)
I don’t think social media is the first thing people think of doing – it’s what they do as a last resort, when they feel they have no other option. And as these example show it’s a very effective, easy and safe way for people to get themselves heard.
Employee activisim is on the rise. If you don’t take time to understand and deal with employee concerns and problems internally you may want to consider how much time you’ll have to spend dealing with the fall out from an ‘incident’ like this.
What can you do?
It’s not all bad. Employee activists can be advocates as well as detractors – get them on-side and they will openly defend your company and products too. That means if you’re proactive you can turn activism to your advantage.
We suggest you start by asking yourself, and your people, the following questions:
- How well aligned is what you say you do with what you (your leaders, managers, employees and suppliers) do in practice?
- Does the way you work encourage and enable employees to speak up about things that are important to them?
- What do your employees expect of you?
- How well are you meeting those expectations?
An anonymous survey is a great way to find out this kind of information and to help kick start the quality conversations you need to have…