Good afternoon.
It’s been said time and time again that, more recently, employees expect their senior leadership to speak up about high-profile and political issues. The escalating war in Israel is the latest geopolitical conflict to find its way into corporate America. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs’s David Solomon are among the chief executives who’ve condemned the attacks against Israel, expressing their solidarity with the country, and many employers have circulated internal memos to staffers addressing the matter.
“All of us at Goldman Sachs are thinking of you and your families in the face of this shocking aggression directed at the people of Israel,” Solomon told employees in a Sunday memo obtained by CNN.
At Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit this week, I spoke to countless Fortune 500 chief diversity and human resources officers who confirmed their companies had shared statements supporting Jewish colleagues. However, public statements appear muted as companies find themselves, yet again, navigating a relatively new terrain in which they feel moved but ill-equipped to react to all current events and human tragedy.
Communicating clearly and ingenuously can be challenging for leaders, who fear alienating or offending their employees and consumers if they get it wrong. But remaining silent can be read as insensitive and overly cautious, Fortune’s Lila MacLellan writes in a piece that offers guidance from communications experts on how businesses should respond to the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East. “Be sure to acknowledge innocent lives lost and hardship on both sides,” Randall Peterson, a professor of organizational behavior at London Business School, told Fortune in an email. Additional guidance: Avoid sending such messages on platforms like Slack, where employees may unwittingly or intentionally foment conversation that stirs tension.
Uber’s former chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer, Bo Young Lee, shared her insight Tuesday in a LinkedIn post that I think is worth sharing in full.
In it, Lee recounted the 2021 escalation of violence between Israel and Palestine, stating, “About half the messages I received demanded that the company support the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement, while the other half demanded we stand with Israel. Interestingly, our employees who lived in the region of conflict were remarkably quiet. It was a tough situation to be in with very little space to navigate without pissing someone off.”
She acknowledged that the dynamics in the Middle East are long-standing conflicts that even the most knowledgeable historians and peace negotiators find difficult to decipher. “I wasn’t arrogant to think we knew better than experts in the field.”
At the time, the company took four steps:
1. It asked employees why they shared their concerns with the DEI function and the reactions they sought.
2. It held listening sessions with employees to help them process their emotions.
3. Her team contacted external experts specializing in religion in the workplace to glean what they were hearing.
4. Uber created a rubric to help the company determine next steps. Core rubric questions included: Do the events affect Uber’s business, employees, or partners? Will taking a stance help Uber serve its customers, earners, employees, or community stakeholders? Is this an area in which Uber has expertise? Are the suggested actions consistent with Uber’s values? Can Uber’s voice make a material impact on the event’s outcome?
Ultimately, she said, the company decided to host educational sessions for employees through its interfaith ERG to help folks gain context and understanding.
This certainly won’t be the last geopolitical conflict employees expect their organizations to lend their voice to, so I’m curious to hear from diversity practitioners: While the ongoing devastation is markedly different from that of 2021, how are you addressing the war internally? Shoot me an email at ruth.umoh@fortune.com.
Ruth Umoh
@ruthumohnews
ruth.umoh@fortune.com
