Understanding Employee Activism in the ‘Age of Hyper-Transparency’

Sam Hartsock, co-founder and partner of qb.consulting, on how workers are a company’s No. 1 asset for a successful ESG strategy

Employee activism is growing and workers are increasingly challenging their employers to change business practices that don’t align with their values. With the United States coming up on a presidential election and emotions running high among different voters on a variety of political and social issues, how can companies better connect with their workforce and prepare for what might happen? To answer these questions, I reached out to Sam Hartsock with qb.consulting , an ESG strategy and communications firm that specializes in “building resilient organizations that put people first” and has worked with high-profile companies like Ben & Jerry’s and Bumble. Prior to starting qb, Hartsock worked with union leaders, labor organizers, and grassroots activists as a director at Change.org . Here’s what she had to say:

How did you first become interested in the role of employees with successful ESG strategies? Why did you start paying attention to employees as it relates to ESG??

I've always been interested in the role of employees in creating organizational change, which is what ESG sustainability and social impact is all about — change readiness. In this work, you're asking, “Do you have a company culture that embraces feedback, collaboration, and that actual change, and are you supporting your employees through that change? Can you meet their current and future objectives?”?

When I was at Presidio Graduate School, I was constantly challenged by my professors and peers. The school brings in the most amazing people who really look at the root cause, not just the symptoms, and ask what underlying power dynamics are at play. This certainly relates to why employee activism exists, and why we need to adopt a systems mindset and actively listen to employees. Active listening is one of the most powerful and underutilized tools people and companies have, free of cost and readily available. What you realize through active listening is that people are everything. Your employees are your greatest resource to achieving your ESG goals.?

What happens when companies fail to think about employees as key stakeholders in their ESG strategies??

If you fail to embrace your employees as part of your ESG strategy, you're going to have an ESG strategy that falls flat or at best is compliant. You're likely to have climate or social impact strategies that employees are eager to poke holes in. Yes, you've set a climate reduction target, but do you still have lobbying dollars going to anti-climate legislation or anti-climate candidates and super PACs? Your employees are going to sniff that out. Do you have a client base that doesn't align with your commitments? We saw that with McKinsey and with Amazon still working with huge oil and gas companies. We see that a lot with media organizations who are still doing PR for oil and gas as well. And employees can call bullshit really easily when they're working inside of an organization.?

This is why when qb. does our clients’ materiality assessments, we include employees in our process, whether it's through surveys, interviews, or, ideally, both. When you're thinking about your ESG strategy and how it works, you want to make sure employees have agency and responsibility in that strategy. You want them to feel empowered to proactively and strategically help you back up the social and environmental positions and commitments you're making. It's going to be a long road ahead. You need everyone's support to be brought in, versus people constantly questioning everything.

What are some specific steps your firm helps companies take to get their employees involved in their ESG strategies?

We want to hear from employees across the organization, at different levels, roles, and locations at the company. For example, new hires are great voices to bring in. They just went through your onboarding process. People who sit on employee resource groups have functional as well as cultural experience. We limit executive talking points the best we can and bring in voices who may not have the obvious title to participate in these ESG conversations, but who can provide deep reflections and insights on what potential material, risk, and opportunities companies do have – how can they leverage and manage those issues and what does that influence actually look like? They'll have some of the best insights.?

When it’s time to take action on your priorities and implement your ESG strategy, the goal and the hope is that you have employees who care more about what you're going to do. They have that increased responsibility, they understand or are beginning to understand the role that they can play in helping you implement your ESG strategy. It kicks off the journey in a nice way.?

Do you have any recommendations about how companies can prepare for employee activism as it relates to the presidential election and the issues that may inspire employees to protest??

The biggest thing we’re saying to companies and clients right now is you don't want to avoid the conversation, and you certainly don't want to wait. Start planning and preparing now for what might happen in the election. Map out what those scenarios could be, identify what you might think may happen, pulling in relevant leaders and individuals across the company to do this. Ask yourselves, “What are the contentious topics for our employees? What might cause our employees to walk out or to take to social media? Do we have any of those high-risk topics?” And then if you've identified what those could be, start having that conversation and embrace it now. Provide a safe place for discussion. Let people be heard. This is where active listening comes in.

What I've seen, and what others have seen in the media as well, is that top-down threats to be quiet and silent do not work. NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) don't work. Social media policies don't work. We live and work in an age of hyper-transparency. The more that companies can proactively embrace two-way feedback and communications as part of their culture, the better off they will be. And they'll be able to navigate these heightened cultural moments that will come and go, like elections or the humanitarian crises and wars in? Gaza and Ukraine? and certainly all the racial injustices that are actively happening across communities within the U.S. If you have that foundation of two-way feedback, two-way communications, you're certainly setting yourself up better to navigate these conversations.?

It’s all about power dynamics – if you're an organization that's hellbent on a steep incline, one-way direction of power within your organization, and you’re not giving your employees agency or responsibility to speak up, then yes, there will be an uprising. History guarantees that for us, if you look back at what's happened. … It really goes back to saying, “This is what we do as a company. These are our values.” Try not to focus too wide.?

There’s also a need to embrace the idea that companies weren't meant or built to solve societal problems, but what they can focus on is saying, “Where can we cause the least amount of harm and address those issues, and where can we make a positive impact and focus in those narrow areas?” So I think certainly having clarity and conversation around that with employees goes a long way.?

This past year, we've witnessed how much ESG itself has been under fire, particularly as it relates to social equity, and some investors and even political leaders have called for an end to “woke activism” at companies. Has this changed how you speak about the work that your firm does, including its interest in employee engagement??

There's definitely been a change in communications, language, and labeling that I've seen this year across the sustainability-ESG-social-impact space, whatever you want to call it. And I think we've embraced that, because what we want to know is what it will take to get the work done that needs to be done. If it means removing some polarizing words from the list of how we describe what we do, let's do it. At the basis of all of this is asking yourself are you talking to your key stakeholders? Are you listening to what's a priority to them? Are you including them in these conversations? And that's your employees, that's your retail associates at the stores that sell your product. That's in talking to the people in factories who make your product. That's talking to supervisors across factory floors as well, thinking about the people who design and bring services to life. It's talking to your customers and certainly investors, but really it's talking to the people throughout the value chain and hearing from them.?

Is there anything else that you'd like to add about this issue that would be relevant and helpful for companies and employees who are worried about what's happening and want to come up with helpful ways to deal with it??

Our personal brand and our professional brand are so tightly intertwined these days. A company can go and vet your social media profile, or employees can go and vet companies’ social media profiles and wonder, “Why did you hire this leader? I saw them campaigning on X, Y, Z efforts.” There’s a need to acknowledge that the way we operate within these institutions needs to change and be more open. We need to have mechanisms to give feedback to an organization and then also see that change. … I think it's all more of just the mindset of being flexible, ensuring you're putting people first in the way that you're designing systems and processes. You're taking time to listen, and then ruthlessly synthesizing and prioritizing what you need to do so that you can take that action. Because in the age of transparency that we operate in, it's going to certainly change the way workers show up.?

Huge thanks to Sam for sharing her insights with us, and stay tuned for more opportunities to learn with her on this topic! I also want to express my appreciation to Alison Taylor , who included Sam in “Corporate Advocacy in a Time of Social Outrage,” a terrific article in the Harvard Business Review. This is where I first came across Sam and the work she and qb.consulting focus on. I’m actually reading your book, Higher Ground, right now, Alison.??

If you’d like to delve deeper into employee activism and the different ways leaders are approaching it, check out some of these additional resources:

• Jason Fried on Why He Doesn’t Do Planning or Politics at Work
• Employee activism in the age of Israel-Palestine and the ‘year of elections’
• How to Build a Mission-Driven Company Like Patagonia | Fast Company
• Gain and Sustain: Employee Activism Pushes Orgs into the Green

As always, if you have feedback, questions, or ideas about this topic, please share them in the comments. If you’d like to learn more about how I’m collaborating with leaders to address issues like employee activism, let's continue this conversation.

Becca Bycott

Founder and Principal,

Meeting the Moment Advisory