It seems like employers and employees are negotiating a balance of power nowadays. As markets in the United States and around the world continue to vacillate between hope and fear, some employers have tried to mandate a return to the traditional five day a week, back-to-office model. Despite economic uncertainty, and some massive layoffs particularly at tech companies, employees tend not to agree.
When possible, employees are exercising their outsized influence on where and how they work and corporate leaders are beginning to adapt.
“Both organizations that are living and humans that are breathing need to understand the relationship,” Cat Colella-Graham shared with us during Pursuit Perspectives, the Pursuit PR thought leadership speaker series.
Through executive and founder interviews, Pursuit PR taps into the experiences of successful executives and uncovers their viewpoints on market trends and professional development.
Graham, responsible for the concept and first and only trademark of Employee ExperienceTM champions employee advocacy and employer strategic communication through her work as a founder of Cheers Partners (acquired in 2021 by Lippe Taylor), advisor, and most recently, Adjunct Professor at St. Francis College.
Companies are countering employee advocacy that may have negatively impacted them in the past year. After mass Zoom layoffs, more “inauthentic leaders” are glaringly obvious. Graham cautions that leaders that are regressing to pre-COVID leadership tactics need to remember that the employee is a key stakeholder, who is just as, if not more important than, an investor.
Employers still need to find creative ways to demonstrate the employer’s value proposition. That is, demonstrate that there are real values and not just during good times, but in the more difficult times too. In other words, don’t be a corporate climber like cousin Greg from Succession. In one episode, he unceremoniously closes his laptop on now fired employees without answering questions. Mistreating staff during layoffs can have many negative consequences.
“The smallest unit of culture is between manager and employee,” Graham notes.
This resonates with us. Proactive communication is a delicate dance that needs to be deliberate and takes time to master. In the effort to minimize costs, or manage the public, it is important that companies don’t undermine the needs of the employee. There is a tendency for companies to do one of two things - be silent and reactive, or be bold and abrupt.
The right approach is somewhere in the middle. In some cases, this is due to concerns that layoffs or other negative news will be leaked to the media by internal parties and vice versa. Timing communications is difficult, but when done correctly, it gives employees the respect they deserve and expect while fulfilling obligations for public sharing.
Team members are considered an essential part of the “total stakeholder” approach that previously focused mainly on customers and investors. Part of that alliance building between corporation and employee centers on the company’s value proposition. It can be a creed or statement of values, but often includes creating a feedback loop through surveys, conversations, and focus groups. According to Graham, this work is coming at a faster clip as companies strive to be more creative in their approach.
That information flow, much like in a living organism, builds a partnership in the employer-employee relationship. As people “we need to understand the why, and that why is often the relationship,” Graham said.
This also relates to companies that are on a path to growth, whether through an exit, M&A or other initiatives. What may have been an incentive early on is becoming a sticky point. All hands meetings and 1:1 managerial and team meetings are all good forums to discuss how the company is doing. By communicating effectively, leaders can reinforce the mission that brings everyone together and motivates the workforce. Keeping the mission alive is essential to retaining employees during challenging times, especially when it might be taking longer to realize the company’s vision for growth.
Communications must be a constant throughout all stakeholder relationships. While a leader cannot message a company out of a problem, they can use communications to build trust. This involves being clear on what is going on even if that involves admitting uncertainty. “If you don’t humanize the experience, the employee’s megaphone can get very big.”
Pursuit PR’s thought leadership speaker series, Pursuit Perspectives, taps into the experiences of successful executives and uncovers their viewpoints on market trends and professional development in communications, technology, financial services and media.