During the last decade it became more and more common to see businesses passing comment on issues of the day and declaring their own corporate values. This seemed to reach its apex in around 2020, the time when the Black Lives Matter movement achieved mainstream recognition in the wake of the death of George Floyd in the US. However, since the end of the pandemic political tides have shifted and businesses now seem less willing or confident to speak out.
At the Crisis Communications conference last week, run by our sister title PRWeek, comms leaders from the hospitality and finance sectors discussed the topic on a panel hosted by Amber de Botton, chief communications officer at Guardian Media Group.
Not all issues are equal
The panelists began by discussing how the comms reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 compared with the response to the ongoing situation in Gaza, following the October 7 attacks in 2023. Morgan Bone, former head of corporate affairs at Virgin Money, pointed out that it was widely accepted that the actions of Russia were unacceptable so many brands decided to speak out, calling it the “high point of Western and US companies quickly spotting something that looked wrong and speaking out about it”.
However, he felt that because the situation in Gaza was far more complicated many brands did not feel comfortable saying anything. “For a lot of organisations – and this is more true the bigger and more global you are – it's just too scary to say anything,” he said.
It’s not that people inside businesses want to speak out any less than before, Bone suggested, it’s that many people are now more fearful of the potential fallout from being seen to show support for one side of an issue.
Rachel Adeyinka, senior manager and head of corporate communications and issues, EMEA, at Starbucks, revealed that the Russia/Ukraine situation was a particular issue for her company as it still operated stores in Russia at the time. She recalled being “inundated with emails and social commentary that we should be pulling out of Russia” but said the priority was hearing their partners. The company was also wary back then of being “the first of the pack”.
“We wanted to see how others were moving. McDonald’s pulled out, and then we pulled out shortly before it got to a breaking point. We also had to put in place platforms for our partners to create conversations and manage their sentiment,” she said.
Not everyone shares the same values
Today’s businesses, noted the panel, face a new challenge, with the modern workforce spanning as many as five generations, reducing the likelihood of consensus of opinion across an entire workforce. “When organisations started to engage with their colleague base about values five or 10 years ago, there was a default assumption that all colleagues would share the same values. It turns out that’s not the case,” explained Bone.
He also talked about how it’s more common these days for many employees to hold views that they feel less comfortable sharing. He cited the example of Brexit, where those who voted to leave may not feel comfortable or empowered enough to share that information. “You have to engage with those views, not just the ones the organisation thinks it should engage with,” Bone added.
Equally, people do not always hold opinions that would stereotypically be expected of them: for example, not every young person who lives in London voted Remain. And, as a result, said Bone, it’s important to engage with staff to assess the temperature around various issues.
Also on the subject of assessing the temperature, Adeyinka pointed to cultural differences, drawing on her experience following the October 7 attacks. It was “understandably hugely divisive and heated”, she said, and as a result companies attempting to engage with staff “openly” wouldn't always work.
To resolve this, Starbucks asked its leaders to have conversations locally, checking in with their teams. “We were very aware that ‘the internal is the external’,” she said. “If someone says something internally and it leaks, that becomes a story. We have to think about creating safe spaces, and safe spaces don't always mean truthful agreement.”
Internal pressures
Both Adeyinka and Bone raised examples of where companies commented on issues not because of external pressure, but because of pressure from colleagues, who needed to feel like their employer represented them.
Adeyinka discussed Starbucks’ response to the Turkish earthquake in 2023. “Headquarters felt that we shouldn't say anything publicly, just check in with partners; but people in Turkey believed that brands should be coming out in support publicly,” she explained. As a result, she said, she had discussions with local team members in Turkey and subsequently ended up going to headquarters in the US and pushing for the company to say something.
Bone had a similar experience when working for HSBC in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. He explained how the chief executive of HSBC in America at the time laid it out in no uncertain terms to the UK head office that something had to be said, despite HSBC being a predominantly British company. Bone recalled him saying: “I'm not asking for your approval, I'm telling you I need to say something to my staff because it is so raw. I'll have an internal riot if I don’t.”
The discussion and examples from the panel highlighted the importance of managing the internal sentiment at your company in times of crisis. Though it might seem that businesses commenting on issues are simply posturing to the external world, in reality sometimes they might be speaking out because that's what their internal stakeholders need.