The summer has barely started, but the mid-year news cycle is already dominated by stories of employees speaking out against radical corporate decisions, intolerable work environments and contract disputes. In the last week alone, hundreds of journalists have gone on strike demanding leadership change, Amazon’s corporate employees have publicly protested return-to-office mandates and the men’s PGA Tour announced a surprise partnership—to both its golfers and the public—with Saudi-funded competitor LIV Golf and the DP World Tour.
In late 2022 and early 2023, a specter of looming tech downturn sparked mass layoffs and budget cuts in an effort to secure corporate bottom lines. Those slashes, coupled with executive attempts to return to the pre-pandemic workplace model, have fueled dissent from a broad spectrum of white-collar employees. The feelings expressed by workers and their unions, primarily through petitions, strikes and resignations, reveal gaps between management and employees that demand a total overhaul of many companies’ internal communication strategies.
Ultimately, employees have made it clear: They want more autonomy over their work schedules and locations to reflect changing priorities; a fair, livable wage and work environment; and bilateral communication between decision makers and the workforce.
This is why internal communications are so important.
A tactical internal communications strategy, informed by your workplace and focused on effectively educating and conveying business decisions, can significantly improve employee reception of company news, policy changes and more. Before news of a controversial merger, budget cuts or modified work conditions hit the public, organizing a well-executed internal communications plan has the ability to decrease pushback and mitigate public amplification.
The Controversial Merger Between the PGA Tour and LIV Tour
Let’s cut right to the chase of this golf merger: NO scenario would have made everyone happy. The new coalition created by the PGA Tour and LIV feels like the Jets and the Sharks of West Side Story uniting to form a new gang called the Flying Sharks. The heat between the two rival entities in the two years since LIV spawned from the Saudi Arabia-backed Public Investment Fund (PIF) has created more dysfunction in the sport than in the previous hundred years of the PGA’s existence. Fans and players have voiced their feelings about Saudi Arabia’s sportswashing tactics. In addition, public criticism of LIV management and players by PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan makes the merger even harder to comprehend.
Now that that’s out of the way—I can’t think of any well-run organization that would keep its key stakeholders out of the loop before announcing a significant investment or buy-out.
The players ARE the product of the PGA Tour and its most important constituents. It’s unacceptable for leadership to let them learn of a merger simultaneously to the public—and on Twitter, no less. Even public statements from the USGA and PGA of America—golf’s governing bodies in the U.S.—confessed surprise at the news.
Organizations considering a drastic shift, including a nonprofit group joining a for-profit commercial entity (i.e. the PGA Tour), must inform essential stakeholders ahead of making changes. It’s non-negotiable. Once notified, employees, management and key stakeholders (in this case, the players) can agree or disagree with the organization’s plans—it is their right to do so.
The PGA Tour hooked one into the trees with the merger’s internal communications structure. They would have been better served to lay up instead of trying to drive the green over water. The safe shot would have been to adequately distribute the information to educate their constituents and align on messaging before making the news public.
Strikes by the Writers Guild of America and newsrooms across the country
Everyone has heard the idiom “death by a thousand cuts.” Sometimes organizations can make a multitude of internal decisions that create perpetual internal communications challenges. A series of small but significant cuts (e.g. industry changes to jobs, benefits, opportunities and pay squeezes) eventually create unbearable lacerations. That is the case for Hollywood writers and local and national news organizations currently in the spotlight.
Unions like NewsGuild, Insider Union and the Writers Guild of America are all on strike to battle unfair labor practices and seek increased pay, improved job security, answers to labor demands and leadership changes. As a result, those unions—representing hundreds of thousands of employees nationwide—are actively striking against Gannett, Insider and the major film and television studios. Currently, the SAG-AFTRA union is poised to authorize a strike for its more than 160,000 film and television actors, which would irrevocably delay basically all film and television projects expected to shoot this year.
Despite key differences in their circumstances, these strikes share a demand for major corporations to prioritize the needs of their employees and the quality of their products. Employees in both strikes are unhappy with the decisions made by leadership, and their unease is exacerbated by a lack of structure for upward communication to share their demands for compensation increases and improved staffing ratios.
No matter a company’s size, an internal communication structure relies on two-way communication and transparency across the organizational hierarchy to understand collective needs. That structural framework helps inform strategic decisions and allows employees to voice their concerns, ultimately allowing organizations to anticipate the best and worst possible reactions from their staff and external stakeholders and avoid rifts between leadership and employees.
Amazon workers just want to stay home
A month after Amazon’s return-to-work mandate went into effect, hundreds of Amazon workers in Seattle and beyond have taken to the streets in protest. Thousands more workers have petitioned Amazon to reconsider its mandate that requires corporate employees to be in the office at least three days per week after nearly three years of fully remote work.
The protest, and Amazon’s response, echo a nationwide divide between executives demanding employees return to the office and employees’ strongly-held preferences to retain flexibility in their remote work environments. While workers may prefer remote work for its cost savings, childcare benefits or time management advantages, there is no denying that Amazon’s internal communication plan around the return-to-work mandate was clear and present (it was announced in a memo to staff from CEO Andy Jassy on Feb. 17).
Amazon’s choice is rooted in returning workers to a collaborative and energetic internal environment that leadership believes fosters the best results for the company. Amazon executed a plan that would draw inevitable dissent, but it set itself up for as much success as possible by delivering a rationale for the decision and clear direction on a go-forward plan. The policy rollout also allowed ample time and opportunity for those in opposition to voice concerns, provide countermeasures and make personal adjustments.
The lesson learned here is that it is possible to make a decision in the best interest of a business while also effectively communicating change to your workforce in a manner that provides for cultivating comfort and gaining buy-in. The decision may not always be met with great enthusiasm, but by treating employees as stakeholders and effectively communicating change to them, companies run a better chance of mitigating pushback or bad PR related to transitions.
