The rise of employee activism has been evident for some time now. Wayfair is the latest company to experience it first-hand and won’t be the last. At this point, there is no excuse for companies to be caught unawares. Every organization should undertake steps to militate against an embarrassing employee demonstration of opposition to a company policy, decision, or action.

The signs that employee activism has become a part of the business landscape have been visible for some time.

Employee Advocacy: The Gateway Drug

For years, companies have asked their employees to advocate on their behalf. The practice predates social media, which inspired organizations to develop employee advocacy programs, priming the pump with posts employees could share. At least 15 years ago, I consulted with one of the name-brand insurance companies which, at the time, was soliciting employee signatures via its intranet to support the company’s position opposing a government regulation. By signing on, employees agreed to have their names appear in full-page ads published in newspapers from the states in which they worked.

Employers empowering employees to stand up for the company in regulatory or legislative battles makes even more sense in the social media era with no shortage of tools to choose from that make it easy for employees to share the company’s position. A lot of employees are eager to help. Even if they’re not highly engaged, self-preservation is a strong incentive; a successful campaign could mean fewer burdens for the organization, a stronger bottom line, and a more secure employment picture.

Workers accustomed to speaking out on the company’s behalf, though, are less likely to have qualms about taking issue with the organization than those who have never raised their voice at all. A Weber Shandwick survey, “Employee Activism in the Age of Purpose: Employees Up(rising),” found nearly 40% of employees are activists, speaking up either in support of or opposition to the company, and another 11% are potential activists. What’s more, while 84% of employees believe it’s appropriate for workers to speak up for their employers, 74% believe employees are right to speak up against them. According to the report, “The belief that employees have a right to speak up in support of their employers is consistent across generations.”

Millennials Lead the Charge

While all employees agree generally that employees have a right to speak up for their companies, Millennials are the only generation that believes they are just as right to speak out against their employers. According to Leslie Gaines-Ross, chief reputation strategist at Weber Shandwick, “Employees, and particularly Millennials, are very tied to the values of the organization and have expectations about their companies—and when they’re frustrated, if their values are being violated, they speak up.”

It’s not that nobody worries that their activism couldn’t cost them their jobs. About 80% of employees from all generations believe those speaking up on controversial topics against their employees could get fired. Only 35% of employees say their employers encourage activism, but Millennials, according to the Weber Shandwick survey, are more likely to work for these companies.

Millennials are also among the most fervent believers that social change is business’s responsibility, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer. Increasingly, younger generations don’t see themselves as worker bees. They see themselves as citizens of the company for which they work.

The Focus of Activism

When employees speak out about their company, the organization’s policies and actions are most likely to be the focus of their ire. Again, there have been plenty of signs that workers are less and less likely to keep their mouths shut and take it when they have an issue.

In 2017, a group of female Nike employees conducted an informal survey designed to collect insights into the Nike women’s experiences with inappropriate behavior and discrimination. When Nike’s CEO got ahold of the survey, he ordered a formal review. Two Nike executives—including the CEO’s likely successor—wound up leaving the company as a result.

Company policies and actions have been at their heart of the most recent high-profile cases of anti-company employee activism. A recent Financial Post article notes that three big companies—McKinsey & Co., Google, Microsoft—and several airlines have all “recently made values-based public statements about government issues they would not support: providing artificial intelligence technology to the military, selling software to ICE, or flying refugee children separated from their parents at the U.S. border.

“What do all these corporate moves have in common? They were in large part motivated by company employees, unhappy with the idea that their employer—and even worse, their own efforts—might support policies and initiatives they found morally unacceptable.”

Add Amazon to the list. More than 7,700 activist employees, frustrated at the company’s failure to join the world’s largest retailers by publishing details of their emissions footprints, attempted to pass a climate-change resolution at the company’s last shareholder meeting. The effort failed, but Amazon Employees for Climate Justice continues; the group has even set up its own Medium account and created a logo.

Google has also faced employee activism over the treatment of employees. Last November, 20,000 or so Googlers walked off their jobs in a coordinated protest over multimillion-dollar severance packages for executives accused of sexual assault and harassment.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff got a letter signed by about 650 employees asking the company to reconsider its contract with US Customs and Border Patrol; the employees banded together after they learned the agency was managing its border activities with Salesforce software.

More recently, 145 Google employees signed an open letter to the San Francisco Pride board of directors, seeking to have the company’s sponsorship of Pride 2019 revoked and to exclude Google from the Pride Parade. The reason: “We have spent countless hours advocating for our company to improve policies and practices regarding the treatment of LGBTQ+ persons, the depiction of LGBTQ+ persons, and harassment and hate speech directed at LGBTQ+ persons, on YouTube and other Google products. Whenever we press for change, we are told only that the company will ‘take a hard look at these policies.’ But we are never given a commitment to improve, and when we ask when these improvements will be made, we are always told to be patient. We are told to wait.”

The Tipping Point

Despite these and many other examples, most people considered employee activism an outlier activity until late June when hundreds of Wayfair workers protested in Boston’s Copley Square after the company’s CEO shrugged off a letter signed by more than 500 employees demanding the company refuse to do sell its products to contractors of border detention camps on the U.S.-Mexico border. According to Madeline Howard, a Wayfair project manager, “We don’t want our company to profit off our children being in concentration camps. We want to have a code of ethics that blocks orders like this from happening again.”

Employees used a channel on the company’s Slack platform to organize the protest, which was coordinated at light speed.

The Wayfair protest appears to be the event that led to a general consensus that employee activism is now part of the business landscape. In reporting the demonstration, the Boston Globe labeled the walkout “part of a new era of employee activism.”

The fact that Wayfair is a furniture company, not part of the tech scene, could be the reason it has heightened awareness of emboldened employees unafraid to stand up for their beliefs.

We Shouldn’t Be Here

The fact that companies behave in ways that lead to employee protests is emblematic of business’s failure to walk the talk we’ve been hearing for years. Companies have been slapping values statements on their walls and touting their employee engagement efforts for years. It should be no surprise that employees who have been told the company won’t tolerate sexual harassment rise up when the company chooses to coddle abusers.

It should be no surprise that black Adidas employees, who see black megastars pitching their shoes, raise their voices about their struggles with race and discrimination in a company led mainly by whites. According to a New York Times article, “race is a constant issue, leaving the relatively few black employees often feeling marginalized and sometimes discriminated against.”

When Google has an entire website dedicated to diversity, it should come as no surprise that LGBTQ+ employees would feel disenfranchised over the dismissal of their concerns.

When Amazon posts regular items to its blog about its commitment to sustainability, it should come as no surprise when employees are distressed that the company won’t take the same action every other major retailer has taken.

In other words, if your actions are out of step with your proclaimed values, it should come as no surprise that employees for whom purpose and values are increasingly important will have an issue with your say-do gap.

The fact that business leaders aren’t paying attention to their employees is even worse. It has been more than two years since Richard Edelman unveiled the 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer, saying “The world has flipped upside down. It used to be a pyramid of authority, now it’s upside down. The influence actually rests with the mid-level people, who speak peer-to-peer. If they’re for you, you win.”

Flipping the pyramid of authority, Edelman said, requires CEOs to focus on their employees to gain trust with consumers. The study also found (as it continues to in the years since) that consumers look at how companies treat employees as a key trust driver.

What to Do?

While there are dozens of specific actions companies can take to head off anti-company employee activism, it comes down to three things:

First, make absolutely certain there is complete alignment between your stated values and your company’s behavior. The very notion of values is spelling out what the company believes and how it will behave. If your values do not drive your business decisions, then they aren’t really your values, no matter how many posters are hanging on walls.

But employees—especially Millennials—make decisions about where they’ll work based on the company’s purpose and values. When they witness behavior that contradicts the values, they unsurprisingly feel betrayed. If they witness it enough, they can be motivated to take action.

If your values support selling products to the organization responsible for how refugee-seekers are treated at the border, employees won’t be surprised at all when you do. In fact, since they know your values, they should be 100% behind your decision. But if your values suggest otherwise, making that sale won’t set well with employees who signed up with your company based on what they thought your beliefs were.

Rejecting a sale may hurt—the Wayfair order was worth $200,000—but you have to weigh that against the cost of a disengaged, angry, betrayed workforce and the very public response they might make. (It’s hard to imagine employees who oppose company actions enthusiastically participating in pro-company advocacy programs.)

Second, listen to your employees. If you’re not keeping your finger on the workforce pulse, you may think employees will celebrate a big sale that, in reality, will shock and dismay them. Listen to employees before an activist group arises and be willing to listen to activist groups after they appear. Take them seriously. And for heaven’s sake, don’t retaliate against them, which will only draw more unwanted attention (as was the case when multiple media outlets reported Claire Stepleton’s departure from Google; one of the organizers of the walkout, Stapleton claimed Google retaliated against her).

A lot of options exist to put you in touch with how employees would react to a policy or decision. I like the idea of maintaining a group of employees who represent a cross-section of the organization, employees you can reach out to when you need to take the population’s temperature. You could do this through pulse surveys the group agrees to participate in, but I prefer the idea of monthly (or at least quarterly) check-ins. These can happen through small group meetings or even one-on-one phone calls. If you’re regularly checking in with employees on issues you’ve identified as potentially contentious, you’ll be able to factor that into your decision-making. I’m not suggesting this means you’ll always change your mind, but at the very least, it lets you know you face a communication challenge and prepare to meet it.

A further step is to invite employees to play a part in the decision-making process. It’s not a new idea. Marland Mold is one example of a company that improved productivity by creating a committee of managers and hourly employees to make decisions about the machinery they would buy. It’s not a big stretch to imagine a Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Salesforce, Wayfair, or other company giving employees the opportunity to weigh in on how the company should proceed. Trust and engagement would be sure to grow, even if the company proceeds with the decision (as long as they can explain authentically and satisfactorily why they rejected employee input).

Third, don’t keep secrets from employees. Remember, Salesforce employees rose up after they learned the company’s products were being used by border officials. That should never have been a surprise. As somebody once wisely said, “There are no secrets. There’s only information we don’t yet have.”

It may be counterintuitive, especially to older leaders, but it’s important to have difficult conversations with employees about topics that could become the spark for activism.

Ultimately, it comes down to one belief company leaders should hold dear: Employees deserve to be treated with respect.

Much of this advice is reiterated in Weber Shandwick’s guidelines for navigating the new wave of employee activism:

1. Embrace employee activism as a positive force to propel your reputation and your business.
2. Ensure your corporate purpose and culture are known from the point of applicant interview and onboarding through employee tenure.
3. Be mindful of what is on employees’ minds.
4. Cultivate a culture of openness and transparency.
5. Establish a response protocol.
6. Clearly articulate and communicate your company’s values.
7. Make your company’s values part of the solution.

A response protocol

Almost all of Web Shandwick’s guidelines focus on how to prevent activism. There’s one item—it’s the fifth on the list—that is reactive rather than proactive: Establish a response protocol. If you don’t have a process for addressing an employee activist movement, it’s time to set one up.

An unexpected employee protest is a lot like any other crisis a company may face: It’s a threat to normal operation that needs to be addressed. Jerking your knee could make it worse. A lot of crisis principles apply, too. For example, people feel that the company has put them at some kind of risk. They want to know what you’re going to do about it and how you’re going to keep the situation from happening again.

Some considerations for your response protocol include the following:

• Acknowledge employees’ concerns. Demonstrate respect for employees, even if you disagree with their perspective. Don’t minimize their concerns.
• Explain what’s next. If the next step is to meet with employees to hear their concerns, tell them that’s what’s being planned.
• Communicate the company’s rationale for whatever it is that has sparked the protest. Make sure employees have all the information they need to make informed decisions.
• Have a process in place for soliciting employee input, whether it’s meetings or some kind of survey. Share the results.
• If employees are right—especially if it’s a question of the company’s stated values—let them know how you’re going to be true to the values in the future.
• If employees are right, apologize to them for letting them down and spell out how you’ll keep it from happening again. Then walk the talk.
• Keep up a steady stream of information. Know the channels you’ll use to share this information and get feedback.

There is no escaping that employee activism is just part of the business landscape now that companies are populated with employees who see themselves as citizens of the company. The solution is to treat them that way. Ultimately, viewing employees as citizens with a stake in the company’s success and its reputation will pay far more dividends than it will cost.