Chief executives routinely face barbs from investors and the media. Now some are dealing with criticism from a group closer to home: their own staffs.
Two recent workplace sagas—at online luggage seller Away and G/O Media, the publisher of former Gawker Media sites such as Deadspin and Gizmodo—highlight the more outspoken scrutiny that some leaders face from employees, The Wall Street Journal reports. At both companies, disgruntled workers led efforts to pressure their chief executives over behavior or decisions they didn’t like.
The top boss used to be more shielded from in-house criticism, and employees mostly let labor leaders do the toughest talking, usually in pursuit of better wages or job security.
But at a time when digital forums like Slack and others are proliferating, workers aren’t just pressing employers to develop a stronger social conscience. They are taking leaders to task for their management style and, in some cases, calling for their jobs.
Another more notable instance of employees calling out their leaders took place at Alphabet Inc.’s Google just over a year ago, when 20,000 employees participated in a global walkout to protest management’s handling of sexual-misconduct claims. The company has long prided itself on an open work culture. In response to the protest, CEO Sundar Pichai said Google would end its requirement for employee harassment claims to be handled in private arbitration.
Companies are still trying to figure out how to handle crises born out of more openly critical employees, says Davia Temin, CEO of Temin and Co., a New York-based reputation and crisis-management firm.
“This is a new competency,” Temin says, “and I don’t think that it’s just a normal leadership competency that you learn in business school.” Read the full story.
