What is the Business Community’s Role in All This?
What should the business community be doing right now?
One of the common questions that we’re facing these days is “Why should the business community be really involved in all of this that is going on?“ A lot of companies are trying to understand what is their role, why anybody would care, if their opinion matters, if they should be really doing anything or saying something or not? The answer, it has come back, is unequivocally yes, businesses must stand up and say something and be counted and they are doing so in droves.
This is actually really significant. And it’s new. As recently as five or 10 years ago, the notion that companies would dive front and center into social matters was not a foregone conclusion. You can recall the tremendous controversy surrounding Nike weighing in on the Colin Kaepernick situation with the NFL, or before that Dick’s Sporting Goods declaring that they would no longer stock or sell assault rifles. Chick-Fil-A’s support of groups that sought to deny same-sex couples the right to marry and LGBTQ rights is a similar scenario, although I would argue that Chick-fil-A was on the wrong side of history. Those events fostered a lot of speculation that taking stands in that fashion would hurt business and there were certainly plenty of threats from people that they would never spend money there again. What happened was anything but. There was a tremendous push and desire to support these companies and that, in part, laid the groundwork for what we’ve been seeing these past couple weeks.
I think it’s important to outline the reasons why it is essential that businesses are getting involved in these discussions, making their viewpoints known, taking this matter seriously, making space for their employees, and generally stepping up to the plate.
Your employees expect it
This is new. 10 years ago, people didn’t talk about social matters at work. It wasn’t an expectation that your employer would make space for you to share your feelings about how you felt on political issues, and racial issues, on moral matters. That has changed. Employees expect – nay, demand! -- that their employers are going to make space for these conversations, support their ability to process, and take specific action.
It is important from a business perspective
Not just the action of making space and saying platitudes but actually what your company does is critical to its path forward in the coming months and years. Your clients and your employees alike are going to be looking to understand what you’re doing, and your company's contributions to the efforts to promote more racial equity and understanding in this country will have a direct impact on your bottom line. Securing business, attracting customers, attracting and retaining employees, morale -- these are all going to be affected by what your company does in the space.
You may actually not know what to do
A big part of these discussions are open sourcing ideas from employees and customers in the public eye, such as what your company should be doing and where it should be operating. Especially in a time where, due to economic concerns very few people are hiring, it makes sense to look for other places where you can make an impact. Your employees and your customers and the public have ideas, and they need to be heard so that you can incorporate them. This is a time where going to the crowd makes a ton of sense for companies as they determine their path forward.
The business community can and must make change
We talk about this a lot at Holistic, but the power of the business community, especially in the United States, to be a facilitator and driver of change is almost unimaginably huge. Business is so fundamental to the United States and the experience of Americans in the business community stepping into these matters is powerful in an unparalleled fashion. We mentioned this in previous blogs around concepts like domestic violence, but it applies to racism and systemic inequity as well. If the business community seeks to lessen or eradicate this fundamental unfairness and takes the appropriate steps to force this issue, keep it on the table, and follow through on our commitments, we will see a change, and it will be profound and it will be fast and it will be lasting.
It’s the right thing to do
Everyone who works at a company goes home after work to the house, to a family, to an apartment, to their future. What we are learning and doing at work is fueling our lives. Work should not be a place where we go to get away from what’s happening in the world, work should be a place where we go to train ourselves to be active participants in what’s happening in the world. And that’s what we’re doing. The sessions, the food for thought, the open conversations and dialogue and trauma and processing and intensity that we are facing, this is all fueling us to be better people in our lives. If your business is going to step up and be a driver of that, that is an impact that will be felt for generations.
These are incredibly trying times and nobody has all the answers. We are heartened by the fact that the business community has stepped into this discussion, this moment, full of vigor. And while not everybody has nailed it, a lot more people are trying than has ever happened before. It’s our job to make sure that they keep trying and to hold them accountable for the promises that they are making.
