Why You Should Have Given Your Team the Day Off Yesterday

Are your employees happy? How do you know? When was the last time you checked in with your managers? And how often do they talk to their staff — about job satisfaction, or wellbeing? I ask because times are tough, and when times are tough we reach crossroads in our careers and lives. These crossroad moments can make or break us, or make or break the companies we run.

More than seven in 10 Americans can’t keep up with inflation — and while countries like Spain are imposing a temporary “solidarity tax” on the wealthiest 1% to cover the cost of inflation relief measures for the other 99%, in the US corporations are doubling down, using climbing costs “as excuses to increase their prices even higher.” Indeed, even with profits at their highest level in about 75 years, Iron Mountain CEO William Meaney told Wall Street on September 22, 2022, he’s long been “doing my inflation dance praying for inflation.”

corporate profits are the highest in decades, weird how that doesn't factor into the inflation discourse but ordinary people's meager wage increases do

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) September 25, 2022

When hard-working, oft-underpaid American citizens hear news of growing inequity and corporate greed, it further polarizes them from their bosses (you) — and, as consumers, from the companies they choose to support (like yours). This is why workers are striking at Amazon and Starbucks, as well as schools, hospitals, railways and mines. 

If, for instance, your brand claims a commitment to workers’ rights, company culture and/or DEI, but your CEO and C-suite salaries are skyrocketing as employee pay stagnates, it won’t be long before an employee calls you out on social media; from there, it’ll feel like seconds before the generations align to come for you, and you start hemorrhaging customers. (All you need is one influencer to join in on the backlash, and you could be doomed.) Which, of course, leaves you with two options:

1. Be authentic, and don’t speak of values you don’t truly hold (Dan Price built and ruined his career this way; edit or redo your About Us page, your LinkedIn and Glassdoor profiles, and your content marketing, if you have to)
2. Be authentic, and demonstrate your commitment to the values you espouse (e.g., write a press release about a new policy prioritizing your employees and your customers over your own salary)

Want to learn more about authentic corporate advocacy? Great.

But in the meantime, here’s a way you could have started yesterday (if you were subscribed to my newsletter)!

A #DayWithoutUs: Unexpected Malediction, or Extraordinary Opportunity?

Employee experience is the new customer experience, they say — and for good (obvious!) reason: when your employees feel included, valued and respected, they’re happier, more engaged and more productive — and treat their customers with a level of care only achieved by customer experience professionals who feel part of a family (and not a faceless business enterprise).

How common is that? Not very, as evidenced by a recent study indicating more than 20% of consumers would rather spend a night in jail than contact a customer support department!

In other words, if you want to keep your customers happy, you have no other choice but to keep your employees happy too; four of the most effective ways to do that are:

1. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)
2. Covered abortion services
3. Mental healthcare
4. Work flexibility

What is #DayWithoutUs?

Fortunately, the #DayWithoutUs was designed (at least in part) to aid workers in organizing for the benefits they truly need. In fact, the very nature of the all-inclusive, all-day, online and in-person national event illustrated how organizations can demonstrate their commitment to their employees — by including workers, wherever they are, in conversations on the most pressing issues of the day (which, it just so happens, center around your four best strategic HR opportunities):

1. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)
2. Covered abortion services
3. Mental healthcare
4. Work flexibility

As the event’s creators, seven Black women organizers, explain on the #DayWithoutUs website:

Our bodies are tired. We are all exhausted from fretting about pandemics, economic insecurity, eroding systems, and institutions and elected officials who have failed us. We’ve been trying to keep ourselves and the people we love safe and encouraged while searching for ways to manage grief, sadness, school and work. And we’ve felt very alone amid all this trauma. Today, we say enough. Today we invite you to abandon borders, boundaries, and binaries to build solidarity across the country.

In other words, it wasn’t hyperbole when, September 28, The Real News Network’s Taya M. Graham asked on Twitter: “Do you hate your managers and boss[,] knowing they get paid to make your life miserable?”

Should We Have Given Our Team the Day Off?

Ms. Graham, unlike most brands, took to Twitter to (unintentionally) leverage the digital strategy known as empathy marketing to demonstrate her compassion for/to her working-class followers — and, based on her years of work, was seen as authentic in her concern. 

She continued: “Would you like to meet people and learn about organizing for a more equitable workplace or work[/]life balance? Then Friday ‘Take the day off’ and register for #DayWithoutUs!”

Terrible idea, especially ‘so last minute,’ right!? And doesn’t worker organizing lead to less productivity and higher costs!? 

Wrong, and no.

• Not allowing your workers to organize can spawn an endless stream of bad press, while aiding your workers in organizing responsibly and efficiently can improve employee morale and engagement
• Making a last-minute decision to improve worker relations with a simple day off is an effortless way to show all your employees that your organization is agile and accommodating; values their wellbeing; and truly listens to what they say about their needs and goals

Furthermore, the event was already widely supported: 

• #DayWithoutUs national partners included Ben & Jerry’s, March For Our Lives, MoveOn, Color of Change, Moms Rising Together, the Southern Workers Assembly, Women’s March, V-Day, the Working Families Party, the Alliance for Youth Action, Voters of Tomorrow, Me Too, the National Women’s Law Center, the Advancement Project, Black Voters Matter, and the Movement for Black Lives
• #DayWithoutUs was gifted with a Twitter custom emoji (or “hashflag”), a million-dollar ad option typically reserved only for behemoth brands with big marketing budgets like Coca-Cola — and, as Wendy’s understands, going viral on Twitter can significantly impact your bottom line

So — and since Friday, September 30, was the #DayWithoutUs, whether you liked it or not — you could have chosen to either: 

• Ignore or condemn it, and face potential social media backlash from your employees (and customers)
• Embrace it, tasking your digital marketing team with last-minute design and copywriting to create content promoting your participation — and, even better, solicit employee videos about the workplace impact of your decision, which you could’ve used long after September 30

Just imagine if your organization were as inviting as this:

By providing your workers with the opportunity to participate in a #DayWithoutUs, you could have begun to instill a sense of acceptance and inclusivity, changing not only the employee narrative but your employees’ actual wellbeing. (By offering remote work, for instance, you can save your full-time workers the equivalent of 33 workdays commuting — while decreasing absenteeism and ‘executed’ vacation time and improving your organization’s work quality and profitability.)

And, if you had chosen to take the day off too, you could have found yourself feeling refreshed — and maybe even positioned as the real Dan Price: a CEO of the people, for whom everyone wants to work.

Disappointed you missed the opportunity September 30? Hearing murmurs that staff may be discouraged, too? Don’t worry: there’ll be other PTO days to offer, other causes to authentically support, and other prospects for positioning yourself among today’s most employee-centric (and customer-centric) business leaders.

Image Credits (in order of appearance)

1. Photo by Jessica Felicio on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/FjvXUeYf1AA
2. Photo by Clarke Sanders on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/JpCOGj0uIlI
3. Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/ETb_5ayeCik