Читать книгу Corporations Compassion Culture - Keesa C. Schreane - Страница 13

In recent years, employees have become emboldened and louder about fighting infractions and inequities in the corporate world. Walkouts have become more orchestrated. Workers have protested unfair pay in an almost synchronistic style across regions. Demands for racial justice have grown more sophisticated. Brands have been persuaded to show solidarity as racial justice activists leveraged the power of advertising to hit the digital economy in a new way. Factory workers unapologetically raised their voices at feeling coerced to work in environments they felt were unsafe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than fearing potential retaliation, these workers demonstrated their faith that the wider society would support their demands for greater protections.

For example, Shipt, a same-day delivery service owned by Target Corporation, came under fire for lowering its delivery drivers' pay amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020—a time when home delivery of groceries and consumer goods was surging. Workers protested the pay cuts with walkouts and work stoppages, arguing that it was wrong to reduce their pay when making deliveries posed a health risk. Earlier in the year, Shipt workers had also staged walkouts over the company not providing its drivers with the protective gear they needed to make deliveries safely.⁶

Walkouts and other strategic actions grew out of the need to implore corporations to change unethical behaviors, pay people fairly, and stop discriminatory practices. Put simply, these actions were laying the groundwork for compassionate activism in the workplace.

This activism was embraced and supported by some in the corporate world, but others refused to commit to the cause. At Tyson Foods, for instance, over 4,500 workers were diagnosed with COVID-19 and 18 died from the illness. Despite this, the company still refused to offer paid sick leave, instead opting to “relax attendance policies and update disability policy.”⁷ However, there were bright lights that penetrated the dark times.

Many corporations broadened health care access to include mental health and well-being services. In spring 2020, Starbucks started offering 222,000 of its US employees up to 20 free counseling sessions with a mental health therapist.⁸ The insurance company AIA uses a digital screening program to check its employees for depression, stress, and anxiety and offers them a quarterly “recharge day.” As Damien Mu, AIA's CEO for Australia and New Zealand, told Financial Review, “The unintended consequence of being high energy and working hard is the team thinks that is what is required to succeed. What they don't see is the down time we all need and that you are not always up.”⁹

During the 2020 economic downturn, some firms made commitments to retain employees and did so with creativity. Instead of laying off employees during the pandemic, Verizon made the commitment to retrain 20,000 workers for different careers within the company.¹⁰ During the Great Recession that started in 2008 and the 2020 pandemic, many companies furloughed employees rather than laying them off—a strategy that assists with a company's short-term cash crunch, while still providing employees with benefits.

These positive, compassionate examples are a start. But unless corporations and their leaders change how they do business and how they treat their most valuable resource—people—they will fail fast. They will not survive among the next generation of business leaders, who have an inherent leaning toward creativity that only happens when employees feel comfortable and supported. Creativity—instead of old-school, destructive competition—delivers innovation that not only leads to revenue generation but also supports a firm's longevity.

The first step toward building a compassionate culture, with equality and inclusion at its core, is making a commitment to putting people first. Here is what a people-first focus looks like:

 Communicating how employees' jobs make a difference in society

 Embracing diverse talent while exploring new markets

 Creating a work culture in which employees exude enthusiasm, excite customers to patronize their firms, and advocate for their brands in their communities

 Committing to doing their best to protect employees day-to-day and also in the event of a catastrophe

 Offering employee incentives that drive company loyalty and real payoffs