When Hamas launched its attack against Israel last week, the mobilization that followed was not only a military one, but a corporate response as well. Global businesses moved swiftly to protect their employees in harm’s way, sending workers home, donating medical supplies and food, and setting up relief funds. Many also made public declarations of their position on the war. “We stand with our employees, their families and the people of Israel during this time of great suffering and loss,” said JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Condemning the war but acknowledging that the underlying conflict is politically fraught, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told employees in a memo: “The dynamics in the Middle East have always been difficult and complex. But these attacks are terrorism and violate our most fundamental of values.”

While the attack was a tragic surprise, the phenomenon of corporations being compelled to take a stand on complicated issues, both at home and abroad, is becoming almost routine. In handling these situations, the stakes can be high. Household brands with solid reputations–like Disney, Bud Light, and Target–can be suddenly cast in a different light among large groups of stakeholders.

Corporations now see these spectacles as major risks to be prepared for, like natural disasters, so many of them are creating a new kind of corporate function that brings together leaders from multiple departments including HR, communications, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). The emerging role is the “social issues working group,” which can go by different names but is essentially a way to pull together an organization’s experts to anticipate emerging issues and help the company formulate the best possible response when situations escalate and headlines break out.

How do they work in action? When the Human Rights Campaign issued an emergency declaration this summer following a wave of anti-trans legislation in the U.S., the accounting firm Baker Tilly was quick to consider its employees’ safety. Their advisors travel all over the world, including to states where anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment was deepening, so the company convened its Societal Issues Management Working Group, a cross-functional team of representatives tasked with responding to social issues.

“Our first task was to send a note to our LGBTQ+ team member network, Pride, to let them know that we were aware of the emergency declaration and how we aimed to respond,” Shane Lloyd, the group’s leader, told From Day One. “Our second task was to update our travel policy to include information to allow our team members to ascertain travel risk as a component of their planning. Our last task was to inform our leaders to ensure they were aware of how to support team members who raised any safety concerns surrounding work-related travel.”

The response was swift: The team had already been monitoring public events, and the infrastructure to care for its employees was well established since forming the group in 2022.

Both consumers and employees have come to expect companies to weigh in on a wide range of public events and socio-political issues – like voting rights, climate change, racial equity, pay equity, support for the LGBTQ+ community, and reproductive healthcare access – a plethora of issues that have become politicized enough to divide people into principled, even enraged factions.

But highly public fiascos have some companies approaching such matters with caution. In every corporate blunder is a cautionary tale about how to engage in this kind of discourse. The goal of these new task forces is to prevent public backlash and respond quickly, thoughtfully, consistently, and firmly. Here are some guidelines for how they operate:

Approach Social and Political Matters with Caution

Motivating corporate involvement in public matters is what Wharton School of Business professor Stephanie Creary calls “‘social authorization,” or outside forces that license a company to take action on an issue. It’s what spurred Nike to back pro football player Colin Kapernick in his protest against racial injustice and Gillette to run an ad campaign espousing the values of the #MeToo movement.

Social authorization has been an especially motivating force since the summer of 2020 – when workers and consumers looked to businesses to change the way they interact with society amid racial justice movement and the spread of Covid – but responding to external pressure is not without complication, risk, and incredible stress on the part of corporate leaders.

Some that have waded into the unpredictable waters of socio-political discourse have faced an angry public, and it has cost them the trust of their employees and their customers. In 2021, Georgia-based companies Delta Air Lines and the Coca-Cola Co. faced pressure from both the left and the right to take a firm position on a state voting rights bill. When the companies publicly opposed, Senator Marco Rubio accused them of being “woke corporate hypocrites.”

Companies that pledged to cover abortion access following the Dobbs decision in 2022 were caught in both the culture wars and legal battles.

In April, when Bud Light sponsored one Instagram post and one Instagram story from Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender social media influencer, the brand’s partnership with a member of the LGBTQ+ community enraged far-right Bud Light drinkers, and the demographic vowed to boycott the beer in videos encouraging violence against queer people. In response, Anheuser-Busch’s CEO Brendan Whitworth released a public statement distancing the company from Mulvaney, betraying the trust of the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. In June, retailers Target and Kohl’s were caught in a similar battle over the display of Pride Month merchandise.

In July came a precedent-shattering case that employers are still processing: the Supreme Court’s decision ending affirmative action in higher education. Thirteen state attorneys general responded by sending a letter to CEOs, warning them against using DEI in hiring decisions.

The corporate landscape is riddled with mines. In attempting to save face with one segment of consumers, companies alienate another and become entangled in a war between cultural, social, and political opinions.

Take a Position and Stand Firmly

Alison Taylor, clinical associate professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and the author of the forthcoming book: Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World, believes that some CEOs lean on public statements only to stave off reputational risk. Executives often feel pressured to take on political matters for PR, responding to the loudest agitators on social media. The result is often shallow and poorly coordinated positions.

Taking a position and then reneging, or even gently backing away, is how companies get in trouble, Taylor told From Day One. “It’s not necessarily that you made the call in the first place and experienced the backlash. It’s if you then look like you have no moral compass, and you’ll respond to whoever’s yelling at you – that’s how you make the situation worse.”

Some companies choose to stay out of politicized issues to avoid being accused of “virtue signaling,” or paying lip service to vulnerable groups for the PR boost, which is what happened to many companies that made public statements about systemic racism in 2020.

Increasingly, employees and consumers expect employers to enter public discourse on thorny matters. Public trust for business is greater than its trust for NGOs, government, and media, according to Edelman’s latest trust barometer report. And though trust for businesses is highest, people say they still want more involvement from businesses on issues like climate change and economic inequality.

Yet the public is obsessed with corporate hypocrisy, said Taylor. Once a position is taken, that position must be defended. “You’re going to have to answer questions about political spending and decision making and your internal commitments. It’s very dangerous to say something about the end of Roe v. Wade if you don’t have a robust diversity strategy and you’re not providing reproductive rights.”

Though there is some debate about whether rage against corporate involvement is damaging to businesses long-term, ABC News reported that after months of dipping sales, Bud Light lost shelf space at retailers like Walmart and 7-Eleven, “demonstrating the longevity of an anti-trans consumer movement that erupted in April.” In July, the company laid off roughly 380 workers.

The drama surrounding Target and Bud Light led the Wall Street Journal to write in June that “companies that embraced social issues are having second thoughts.” But many leaders aren’t having second thoughts. The people who lead DEI and ESG initiatives do so often because they care deeply about these issues.

Those who don’t want to stand back are steeling themselves before backlash happens, even before newsworthy events occur, with their newly emerging social issues working groups designed to respond to public events quickly and consistently.

Don’t Wait to React. Anticipate Controversy as It Brews

In 2021, the consulting firm Deloitte set up the Responsible Business Practices Working Group, a cross-functional team of 20 representatives from across the company – including HR, DEI, the general counsel’s office, risk, crisis communications, client services, government relations, and from Deloitte’s foundation.

“We make sure that we take care of our people first,” Deloitte’s chief purpose and DEI officer Kwasi Mitchell told From Day One. “Be that through specific evaluation of our policies or outreach to those communities directly. We also think about the people who have been impacted in society, so we might make a donation to an organization that is helping those directly impacted. And lastly, we are thoughtful with respect to our communications with our employee resource groups that may be impacted.”

Though they are prepared to be reactive, the hallmark of social issues working groups like Deloitte’s is that they are proactive, ever-studying what’s going on in politics, social matters, health, and law. If you’re not working this way, said Mitchell, it’s easy to fall into traps that so many companies do.

“We have not been in any situations where someone can say ‘We didn’t think about that,’” said Lloyd at Baker Tilly. “I like the emphasis on process, because there’s an assumption that companies are responding to all manner of societal issues.” But it’s impossible to respond to every controversy, he said. There’s enough going on in the U.S., and multinational companies will be pulled in all directions.

Lloyd, who is also the company’s head of DEI and societal impact, believes that some issues that have been highly politicized still require a company to take a stand. Earlier this year, the company sponsored a report by the think tank Coqual about gender in the workplace, which specifically addresses the physical and psychological safety of transgender people.

Devise a Repeatable Process for Responding to Every Issue and Event

Deloitte’s process is rigorous as well, a five-question framework adapted from a Harvard Business Review article: What would our internal stakeholders think? What would our external stakeholders think? What is the overall cost to society? Would the company’s core values be challenged if we did not act? And finally, can we actually influence the issue?

The question of influence is one corporate leaders are grappling with. The expectation that businesses will involve themselves in public debate is still new, and many companies are still trying to figure out how, and if, they have the weight to change anything.

“When you think about the history of business and the history of separating business from societal issues, the fact that companies are starting to hire someone called a director of employee activism helps us to understand that this is a tide that is turning,” Wharton’s Creary said in a 2022 interview.

There are matters to which Deloitte has chosen a light touch, like voting rights. The team decided that it might sign a public letter or make a donation, “but we haven’t put the infrastructure in place to impact that issue longer term.” Mitchell learned through multiple surveys that politics is a topic Deloitte employees prefer to leave outside the office, so their involvement in political matters has been lean.

In considering an issue, Mitchell’s team answers each question in the HBR story and awards an overall score, then debates the course of action with the CEO. With a diverse group and systematic analysis, they present better proofs for their decisions. “As we analyze things and put it in front of our CEO and his core leadership team, they can see that we brought the full perspective of the firm,” he explained.

That formula seems to leave most people satisfied with the process, even if some don’t get the result they hoped for. At least everyone feels heard and there is consensus reached on how the decision was made. “What’s been really interesting is that people say, ‘I don’t necessarily agree with where we landed, but I understand where we landed,” Mitchell said.

He estimates the team has worked on 40 or 50 topics over the last two years, including voting rights and reproductive rights. Before the working group was formed, Mitchell said opinions came from all directions, and it was difficult to understand if it was a reflection of the whole community, or just a vocal minority. “You also have a fair number of people who don’t feel that empowered, who might have a distinct [point of view] who would not necessarily elevate that to leadership right away.”

Take a Position You Can Support Inside and Outside the Organization

That these groups are cross-functional indicates maturity in corporate coordination. Corporate America has developed dozens of functions – PR for messaging, HR for culture, government affairs for lobbying – but it’s a mistake to separate these functions, said Taylor. “If you’re going to commit to something like transgender rights, then you’ve got to be prepared to reflect it in your culture, your HR decisions, and your leadership. If you’re being discriminated against, it’s not just political, it’s personal. It’s about culture. It’s about HR. It’s about political spending. It’s about values.”

Look for Outside Help When You Need It

While some companies assemble internal teams, others look outside the organization to bolster response plans. One such organization is Open to All, a nonprofit coalition of businesses that commit to inclusion of all people.

Calla Rongerude, Open to All’s managing director, estimates that one-third to one-half of Open to All members have internal DEI councils, but attrition in DEI teams has driven leaders to their organization. “DEI budgets are shrinking, roles and departments are shrinking, and so are resources both in staffing and budget, but then you have this really heightened, polarized political environment. I’ve been working on nondiscrimination for almost 20 years, and I’ve never seen it this volatile before,” she said.

Open to All is set up to act quickly. When a new law is passed or a Supreme Court decision handed down, the organization assembles its policy contacts to brief members on the implications and dispel bad information stirred up in the chaos.

“We also have our coalition of nonprofit organizations that can come in when there is a big moment – whether it’s Pride backlash, anti-trans legislation, affirmative action, or Dobbs – and talk about how companies can meet the moment,” said Rongerude. “They’re not just guessing in a conference room. They can actually talk to people who are doing this work on a public policy level.”

Members of Open to All come together for purpose, setting aside business matters. “We have Gap and Levi’s and American Eagle. They’re all selling jeans, but when they’re working with us, they’re talking about how they can revamp their loss prevention policies so they’re eliminating bias at the returns counter. They put the competition aside.”

Acknowledge the Limits of Social Issues Working Groups

As effective as these task forces can be, and as reassuring it may feel to have one, there are limits. A social-issues working group can’t eliminate risk, Mitchell is emphatic about that. “Large organizations will always wade into some aspects of risk with respect to the way they operate their businesses or how they respond to a specific issue,” he said. “What this group helps you do is be thoughtful on a wide range of the risks that you might wade into.”

The processes these groups exercise produce confidence and consistency, Mitchell said. It compels the business to ask how its decisions will affect employees, clients, and public stakeholders. “We try to have it framed from all of those lenses, just to make sure that we’re consistent in our actions on a daily basis.”

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, the BBC, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife, among others.

(Featured photo by Leo Patrizi/iStock by Getty Images)

How Companies Can Lead in an ‘Age of Outrage’

The nation is on edge. We’re anxious and angry, distracted at work, and eager to brawl out our differences in public. At the highest level, our presidential candidates have framed Tuesday’s election as “an existential battle for the nation’s character, its democracy and the safety of its residents.” Social media influencers on both sides of politics have turned pain and rage into a lucrative business model. More and more families are becoming estranged over disagreements great and small, while contempt and disrespect have become ingrained habits for many.The mood seems contagious, with “assuming the best in others” in rare supply. Boeing endured a costly, contentious strike by unionized machinists who demanded restoration of their pensions. In September, Fortune reported that employees at Amazon were “rage applying” for other jobs after their CEO ordered workers back to the office five days a week.Is this our new modern culture–or are there ways to reduce the rage? Karthik Ramanna, professor of business and public policy at the University of Oxford, describes the moment as an “age of outrage” in his new book, The Age of Outrage: How to Lead in a Polarized World, published last week by Harvard Business Review Press.As election season in the U.S. reaches its peak, rhetoric is sharpening (not to mention quite foul) and the public is feeling nervous and emotional. While tension and even anger over political, ideological, or values differences is nothing new, for the title of his new book, Ramanna chose the word outrage. There’s just something different about the current tenor of the moment: A hotter temperature and a higher pitch. For companies, dealing with this force is no longer a PR task, but a “critical capability,” he writes.Managing in the age of outrage is not the same as managing isolated incidents of disagreement, Ramanna told From Day One. It’s a mistake to treat corporate mishandling of these ongoing issues as mere PR problems or temporary. Those who do will find themselves playing defense day after day. “Tomorrow there’ll be a new issue, and the day after there’ll be a new issue. That approach isn’t going to work,” he said.The outrage Ramanna writes about is typically focused on leaders and institutions, and HR and business executives are preparing for stress and heightened emotions following the election season. Learning from embarrassing corporate gaffes, many firms have been increasingly proactive, institutionalizing their responses to angry employees and the public with social-issues working groups. These are cross-functional committees assembled to prepare for crises, both internal and external, and determine whether the company will respond–and, if so, how–when they arise.Ramanna warns employers against prioritizing processes over outcomes when preparing a response to outrage. Agree to rules of engagement, but “we don’t want to get too bogged down in that process. We want it to be more of an informal guidance to the way we operate. It’s more important that we actually trust each other than that we have written rules that say we trust each other.” The rules should be simple, he said, “things that people can recall in an instant. If people can’t recall what the rules of engagement are when they’re in the heat of the moment, then they’re not very useful.” For this reason, Ramanna is reluctant to overly formalize the process, “because that might actually kill what you’re trying to do.”As a leader, you should temper expectations. “No matter what you do,” he writes, “you can never fully address the demands made of you.” Remember also that “you will always be seen as part of the problem.” Instead of wrongly believing you have the power to solve all problems or quell all outrage, aim for “turning down the temperature.” In The Age of Outrage, Ramanna describes how.A Framework for Turning Down the TemperatureRamanna offers a four-part, cyclical framework for turning down the heat. First, identify the source of the outrage. That is, the deep-seated and underlying causes fueling the anger. Look beyond the inciting incident to the wound it has irritated, and manage your own preconceived notions of your antagonists and their motivations.Second, determine the extent to which the organization can effectively respond. What is within your responsibility to address, and what is within your capability to address? This is where your company’s values and mission can guide you. If you say you will protect reproductive rights, for example, then it’s imperative to step up when the issue arises in the public arena. In fact, moments of anger present an opportunity for clarifying an organization’s values, Ramanna writes.Third, take stock of the leader’s influence. Now that you’ve identified what is an attainable and appropriate response, how will the leader win the support of others in influential positions as well as the support of the workforce?And finally, build resilience. “A resilient organization (or system) is characterized by the delegation of authority,” Ramanna writes. “By situating decision-making close to ground realities, the organization both improves the informativeness of its decisions and diversifies its thinking and, as a consequence, can endure and even thrive amid negative shocks.”Are Corporate Values Outmoded?Values statements and public commitments to causes or communities may be useful guideposts for how to focus corporate response in the age of outrage, but they can also make it harder to deliver. Companies have caught themselves in dreadful thickets in the name of transparency and principles. When corporate behavior, or the behavior of business leaders, doesn’t reflect publicly stated values and beliefs, companies feel the pain. Ramanna cites Disney’s entanglement with Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill in 2022. Despite being a public advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, the company did not publicly oppose the bill and was at the same time writing checks worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to politicians who sponsored it in the state senate. NPR reported that “Disney employees shared their outrage on social media when the company did not denounce the proposed legislation.” (In 2024, Disney resumed political donations to Republican candidates in Florida who voted in favor of the bill.)Being publicly “good” and values-forward can indeed make you a target, according to New York University professor Alison Taylor, who, in her book Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World, points out that those seeking a target for their outrage will look for the companies and leaders most vocal about their principles.“Some companies can legitimately argue that these are not part of their value proposition. That’s not the case with Disney,” Ramanna said. “Part of why they got into the problem in the first place was when the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill was initially being proposed, they said, ‘Oh, we’re neutral in this.’ No, you’re not neutral. You’ve already established that you’re not neutral, and now it looks opportunistic to claim that you’re neutral.” Where the issues are directly related to the business or its stated values and identity, then you can’t step aside. You must proactively engage.Despite shifting political winds, “there is also little doubt that many institutions today have adopted a more progressive culture,” reported the New York Times this week. “They acknowledge bias and power imbalances between people of different genders and races. Despite efforts to roll back D.E.I. programs, few businesses or schools would doubt the importance of recruiting people from different backgrounds. A range of progressive causes—climate change reduction, workplace protections and higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans—remain popular.” Even so, in an age of outrage, corporate values aren’t as simple as they used to be. As belief systems diverge so severely, it can be tough to get people to agree, even in the workplace. Ramanna distinguishes between “opportunity values” and “outcome values.”While outcome values tend to divide, opportunity values can unify: Even if you can’t agree on the outcome, at least you can agree on the rules of engagement—how a group arrives at conclusions and makes decisions. “The commitment to the opportunity values is more meaningful than the commitment to outcome values, especially when you’re dealing with this outrage,” he said.Bracing for a Polarized Workplace Post-ElectionTo be clear, Ramanna isn’t interested in prescribing values or making ethics judgements, nor does he offer advice on business strategy. Companies have to do that on their own, he said. But when it comes to managing in an age of outrage, he does advocate a kind of corporate stoicism: Concern yourself only with what you can control.With the election and its aftermath upon us, Ramanna urges employers anxious about the workplace climate not to quit before they start, but make a plan to lead in an age of outrage. “Look, it’s never too late. On one hand, you might say, ‘Oh my God, I should have started this six months ago, five years ago,’ whatever it is. But on the other hand, if you don’t start it today, it’ll still be too late in six months.”Despite the outcome of the election, he said, leaders can count on two things. “No. 1, that we’re not going to have some magical healing on the day the elections are over or the results become clear. If anything, we’re going to be sharply divided. The second thing is, as a business, you have to figure out a way to work through that.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.(Featured photo by Solstock/iStock by Getty Images)

Who Are the Next CHROs? A High-Stakes Recruiting Task Gets Serious Attention

Not long ago, if you’d asked someone what the most conservative part of an organization was, chances are the answer would be the HR department. Well, maybe tied with the general counsel’s office, but the image of the top HR officer as a high-ranking paper-pusher or disciplinarian carried on for decades.No longer. In the information age, when companies are increasingly investing in human capital over physical capital, the chief HR officer plays a pivotal role in a company’s fate. Today’s CHRO is a business leader, operating what Deloitte named “boundaryless HR,” in which “the traditional people discipline itself starts to merge with other related disciplines like decision science, behavioral economics, and academic disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology.”The question now becomes: Where can companies find a person like that for such a high-stakes role? Turns out, CEOs are far more proficient in CHRO selection today than they were a decade ago, says John Bremen, a managing director at consultancy WTW, where his job is to imagine the future of the C-suite. “People issues today are so much more pronounced and so much more prominent than previously.”From Day One spoke with CHROs in the Fortune 1000 and the consultants who recruit them to find out what it takes to be a CHRO at the world’s biggest companies. What do CEOs look for in an HR chief? And who’s next in line for the job? No one single formula emerges, but several key attributes emerge, including previous experience as a CHRO, demonstrated HR savvy plus a law degree, or a proven track record of adaptability across multiple industries.All Eyes on the CHROCHROs are experiencing unprecedented attention, thanks to their inestimable value confirmed by the pandemic, economic swings, social unrest, return to work, and now the global skills shortage. Dan Kaplan has spent 15 years recruiting CHROs at consulting firms like Heidrick & Struggles and Korn Ferry, where he’s currently a senior partner. He told From Day One that private-equity firms, in particular, have homed in on the position as they restructure companies, assessing not just CEOs and CFOs rigorously, but now the CHRO as well. Some PE firms replace the CHRO first, he said, “with a view that that person becomes the catalyst to assess and replace the rest of the leadership team.”Given the scope of the role, executives are appointing fewer first-timers than they have in the past, according to the CHRO Turnover Index by Russell Reynolds Associates. The number of rookie CHROs has been decreasing globally since mid 2022. Among S&P 500 firms, first-time appointments are down 19 percentage points since that year. This is even more true for FTSE 500 companies–the UK’s answer to the S&P 500–where for nearly a year in 2022-23) every incoming CHROs was a veteran of the role.Maral Kazanjian, the CHRO at the credit-rating agency Moody’s (company photo). Featured photo at top: Kate Gebo, CHRO of United Airlines, spoke at From Day One’s Chicago conference this springThere’s also an appetite for highly varied professional experience. The lion’s share of CHROs today are cross-industry hires. Analysts at Heidrick & Struggles examined the 2024 Fortune 1000 companies and found that more than 77% of external CHRO hires were from other industries. With a few exceptions, the CHRO is an “industry agnostic” role, said Kaplan, and HR chiefs tend to glide easily between industries. Among the most coveted qualities in a HR chief is agility, and cross-industry work naturally develops that skill. Now companies recruit CHROs with much of the same criteria they use when recruiting business leaders: experience with mergers and acquisitions and the grunt work of combining workforces, knowledge of a P&L, plus familiarity with thorny issues like labor-union negotiations. “At a company juncture—say, a new CEO comes in and they’re tasked with some turnaround—they often need a different type of CHRO for that phase of the company,” said Jennifer Wilson, co-head of the global HR officers practice at Heidrick & Struggles. “With the amount of M&A and cost-cutting, and then getting back to growth, they want to find somebody who’s been through that cycle.” Why Your Next CHRO May Also Be a JDIf you’re looking for a CHRO with cross-industry experience, plenty of exposure to the C-suite, plus experience with assembling multiple companies and quelling labor disputes, a labor-and-employment lawyer often satisfies the brief. With greater exposure to risk (as a sample: reputational, environmental, technological, privacy, and supply chain) it’s reassuring to know there’s an attorney occupying the seat. “There’s the employee-engagement lens, and there’s the productivity lens, there’s the regulatory lens, and there’s the profitability lens,” said WTW’s Bremen. HR is no longer a static department, now it has to make things happen.Law practice also develops the confrontational confidence CHROs need. “You need to have had the experience of walking into a senior leader’s office, closing the door, giving them feedback, and challenging them on an issue where you think there’s a pretty good chance of getting fired today,” Korn Ferry’s Kaplan said. At times, it’s as diplomatic as managing the CEO’s personality and presenting even the most uncharismatic leaders to the workforce as people who can be trusted, which sounds a lot like what might happen in a courtroom.Before Claudia Toussaint became the chief people officer at the global water-technology company Xylem, she was the company’s general counsel. CHROs can’t afford to be intimidated by hierarchy, she said. They have to be prepared to tell the CEO that they’re out of line, and why it matters. The professional training of an attorney comes in handy too. Lawyers gather evidence, make conclusions, and present a case. “That skillset, I think, is far more valuable today in the HR function than five years ago or ten years ago,” Toussaint said. “I think that’s why people are increasingly saying, ‘These people that have a law degree and have been trained to think systemically, to take data, analyze data, reach conclusions from it, and then drive impact from those conclusions—that’s actually not a bad background for leading HR function.’”HR and the general counsel’s office have a natural relationship. Maral Kazanjian, the CHRO at the credit-rating agency Moody’s, felt she was effectively moonlighting as an HR professional while working as the firm’s attorney, applying the law to all kinds of employment matters. “I was really lucky because Moody’s is a very successful company and also has a really fast-growing information-services business within the traditional ratings agency. Because they were growing so fast, a lot of employment issues arose,” she told From Day One. “We were in different jurisdictions. We had different questions we wanted to answer about ‘How do we do hiring right? How do we handle performance management? How do we maintain a focus on being inclusive? How do we do promotions right?’ There are legal questions, then there are operational and human capital questions.” Kazanjian’s first time leading the people function was at WeWork during the dog days of the pandemic. In February 2022, she returned to Moody’s, where she occupies the chief people officer job today.Jennifer Manchester, the CHRO at Fiserv, is a relatively new arrival to the C-suite, and like Kazanjian, has jumped industries. Manchester first crossed paths with HR at her former employer, the Dow Chemical Co., where she worked in the general counsel’s office on mergers, acquisitions, and other corporate transactions. “I always loved the employment piece and the people side of things the best. That’s where I figured it out: That was really ultimately what I wanted to do.”Manchester moved over to Fiserv in 2015, working closely with HR as a labor attorney, and ascended to the CHRO seat last spring, “I’ve always gravitated toward people issues, trying to solve problems. It’s such a dynamic role.” But about this she was clear: You can’t just pluck any attorney out of the legal department and promote them to the chief position. “You have to have some substantive core expertise in HR or employment. HR is a real science, and I don’t think anyone can just do it.”Deep, Successful Experience in HR Counts TooA background in HR is hardly irrelevant. Among the 10 highest-ranked companies on the Fortune 500, most of their CHROs have spent decades as HR practitioners. Melissa Hagerman, CHRO at insurance firm Genworth, came up through the HR department, and, like many of her peers in the Fortune 500, has worked across industries, including consumer and automotive retail and healthcare. She joined the HR field when it was still known as the personnel department. Being an effective CHRO takes compassion and diplomatic agility, she said. And it can’t be done without a natural curiosity for businesses. “As a CHRO, you have to really genuinely care about what the business is doing and where we’re heading, and you have to care about the people that are on the path to get us there. That is something that I really try to embrace and live by every day.”Hagerman is also a keen scout, continually monitoring what’s going on both inside and outside the organization, “understanding what’s happening politically and socially in the markets so that I can weigh in, whether that’s with our executive team or with our board of directors, or being able to think about how those may impact eventually our workforce.”HR has far more credibility and influence than in the past, Hagerman said, reflecting on her decades in the department. “The world now understands that people resources are really fundamental to the bottom line. Succession planning, development of associates—the focus on those things is far greater now than they ever were. Of course, cybersecurity, protection of data–all of those things–are more in the limelight now than ever.”Yet Your Next CHRO May Not Be Working In HR Right NowA career in HR can win you the seat at the top now, but that may not be true for the next generation of CHROs. Today, businesses seldom want an HR executive who has spent all their time in the department, said Wilson at Heidrick & Struggles. “In the companies we work with, it’s often said that if you can find somebody with a business background who’s either been in management consulting or held either a P&L role or a functional role outside of HR, that’s more interesting to us.”The next crisis is always around the corner, Korn Ferry’s Kaplan told From Day One, and HR has to be there to meet it. He rattled off a list of recent trials, from financial and economic wobbles, political unrest, racial injustice, reproductive rights, return to office, artificial intelligence, and gun crime. “If you are not prepared to put on your dance shoes and figure it out, you can’t do this job. More than academic credentials, intellect, or experience, you have to be able to tap dance.” As a result, people aren’t exactly grappling for the seat, he said. It’s a big job and it’s tough to recruit for. Some people get too close to the sun and opt out; others don’t realize what they’re signing up for before it’s too late.Everyone is looking for agility in the role. Bremen at WTW speculated that consumer-oriented industries–like retail, fast-moving consumer goods, cosmetics, or fashion–may be developing tomorrow’s most coveted CHROs. Tech firms develop great HR talent too because they have to marry operational complexity with consumer demands. Regardless of industry, he believes the most successful future CHROs are schooling themselves in the application of new technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, and have analytical capabilities far superior to their predecessors.In case you were thinking of plucking your next CHRO from the Wharton School, however, Kaplan cast doubt on the wisdom of choosing an MBA for the job simply because they’re a whiz at business. “If someone says to me, ‘I’m not an HR person, I’m a business person,’ that is a sign that I’m wasting time. I’ve never heard a CFO say, ‘I’m not a finance person, I’m a business person.’”Disciplines like finance can be taught in school, Kaplan argued, but HR is learned through apprenticeship. Management consultants who spoke to From Day One predicted that the future chiefs who are coming up through the HR department are leading complex functions at the moment, as heads of talent or directors of compensation and benefits.As today’s CHROs consider their potential successors, what are they looking for? At Moody’s, Kazanjian wants someone who is open-minded, bold, and analytical. She imagines that person might be in law, or they might be in management consulting. Toussaint wants someone who deeply understands the company culture at Xylem as well as how the business makes money, someone who’s good at data analysis, and someone who is a “truth teller,” uncowed by hierarchy. Manchester hopes her Fiserv successor has financial acumen and an always-learning attitude. At Genworth, Hagerman wants a values-driven, business-minded leader with deep knowledge of HR and a knack for diplomacy. Someone who is willing to uphold integrity, “above all else.”“Once upon a time, it was possible to be the most senior HR leader in a company and not have a grounding in the business fundamentals,” Bremen said. “That skillset is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition.” Yet business acumen alone isn’t enough without a deep understanding of the CHRO discipline, though he’s seen it happen. “They struggle. Just as you would struggle if you put someone in a chief marketing officer role who did not have a background in marketing. Sometimes leaders take those HR skills for granted.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Business Insider, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Election Stress in the Workplace: How Leaders Can Respond Without Taking Sides

Business leaders don’t need outside research to tell them that anxiety around the coming Presidential election is high–and that the stress can impact employee well-being and productivity, but here are some sobering stats:•73% of U.S. adults say they are anxious about the election, according to the results of the 2024 American Psychiatric Association’s annual mental health poll.•55% of Americans surveyed by Pew Research always or often feel angry about politics.•8 of 10 in the Pew survey used a negative word or phrase to describe how they feel about politics, with “divisive” being the most used.•Nearly two thirds of workers (65%) surveyed this summer by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) said they have experienced or witnessed incivility in their workplace within the past month. And more than a third of workers (34%) said they believe the November election will trigger additional incivility in the workplace.In fact, psychologists and researchers are now studying a distinct form of anxiety called “political anxiety” and the unique way it harms both physical and mental health. The stress has been building since the 2016 election.The good news: executives, HR teams, and managers can—and should—prepare (now) for the November election. With just a few weeks until workers head to the polls, From Day One reached out to HR experts to learn about their strategies to diffuse stress and political polarization in the office, and, if necessary, address conflicts that may arise. Among the takeaways:Encourage Employees to VoteOne simple and non-controversial step companies can take is to promote voting. While there’s no federal mandate that employers give workers the day off to vote, some states do, and many companies provide flexibility on election day. Encouraging workers to vote is a good way to acknowledge what’s on their minds without taking a political position.If you’re curious about what other organizations are doing or need to back up a recommendation to leadership, check out Time to Vote, a non-partisan business group launched in 2018 that believes “workers shouldn’t have to choose between earning a paycheck and voting.” With more than 2,000 member companies including VISA, P&G, and Target, the organization is attempting to bridge the legislative gap and increase voter turnout. Patagonia, one of the companies that founded Time to Vote, has been giving its employees Election Day off since 2016. This year, the outdoor apparel company will close stores, offices, and warehouses on Oct. 29, national Vote Early Day, to allow workers to vote and volunteer in support of the election.Acknowledge Political Differences, But Don’t Take Sides“Some leaders want to take a stance, but I would caution them not to impose their political views. Your job is to stay neutral,” says Deb Josephs, an HR consultant and executive coach. You can take a stand, without taking a side, she adds, “as long as you support the individual as opposed to an issue.” When Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, for example, one of her HR colleagues said their company put out a statement to let employees know that they could come to HR if they needed support for reproductive health. Large employers like JPMorgan Chase and Meta and others announced they would cover travel costs for employees who are seeking legal abortions out of state. Keep the Focus on Empathy and Employee Support “Organizations need to say it’s a polarizing time, and that could be impacting how you show up at work,” offers Tracy Avin, Founder of TroopHR, a human resources peer group with more than 1,300 members and 15,000 LinkedIn followers. Avin says the topic of how to address the election has come up often in the TroopHR message boards, so much so that she decided to host a fireside chat called “Leading with Empathy in Polarizing Times” with an outside expert this September. One piece of advice from the virtual session: Develop an "Allyship Series" or similar educational program to foster understanding and empathy for different experiences and perspectives within your organization.She advises HR leaders to do what she does for her members: create a supportive environment where all viewpoints are welcome. “It’s an opportunity for managers to know how to respond. It’s not about opinions,” she said. “You can say something like, ‘It seems like you’ve been upset lately,’ so that person can express that they are stressed out. Then you can tell them to take a day off or provide mental health resources as needed.”Additional outlets for employees might include a moderated Slack channel or an employee resource group (ERG). “What’s most important is that employees know where they can go for support,” says Leonora Wiener, an executive leadership coach and former chief operating officer of Consumer Reports. Communicate Early and OftenAt Consumer Reports, Wiener helped lead teams through the 2016 and 2020 elections, the racial-justice reckoning after George Floyd’s murder, as well as the pandemic. She stresses the importance of listening to employee concerns and actually asking your staff what kind of support they are looking for. “Oftentimes organizations aren’t that good at finding out what their ‘internal customers’ need,” she said, adding to make sure any feedback groups are diverse and include representatives from all generations and backgrounds. In terms of communications, her philosophy is lather, rinse, repeat. “People need to hear the same message many times, and it needs to be said through different channels. Not everyone reads Slack or emails, and not every manager delivers the message in the same way.” Start that election communications drumbeat today, she says.Don’t Go It Alone Josephs echoes that sentiment, recalling how much “over communication” was required during the pandemic and other recent events. She also points out the added pressure and increased responsibility borne by HR and people leaders as social and political issues continue to divide the country and tensions spill over into the workplace. Her tips: find support, leverage your professional networks, and share information with your peers. They are likely also engaged in scenario planning and reviewing their employee handbooks to ensure current policies are being followed. Revisit and Reinforce Your Corporate Values Speaking of employee handbooks, now is the time—not the day before the election—to take a good look at your organization’s values and what employee behaviors are and are not tolerated. “You want to support employees,” said Wiener, “but you also need to be prepared for [how you will respond to] conflict.” Once you review your employee handbook, it’s important to figure out how the company will act if one of those values is violated. “Leadership needs to decide if they have zero tolerance or if they will put an employee on probation, and they need to be consistent.” Get Input From the Legal Department But Don’t OvercorrectShould you involve legal? Yes, says Wiener. “It’s important to be prepared and understand what you can and cannot do.” Scenario planning, she says, is critical. Ask yourself: How will either election outcome affect my products and services (supply chain, tariffs)? What are the risks and mitigants (for any immigrant workers)? How will employees be impacted (job productivity, mental health)? How might you handle immigration issues, or a harassment claim? But don’t go down a legal rabbit hole. Alison Taylor, a clinical professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and author of Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World, weighs in with a word of caution:“The main thing I’m seeing out there is that corporations are overreacting to advice from their legal teams, and dialing back on DEI and ESG because they fear legal retaliation under a Trump presidency,” said Taylor. “But they seem to have forgotten how angry the public and employees were over issues like climate change and racism under the last Trump presidency.” She continued: “A laser focus on legal risk is not a good idea. There needs to be broad scenario planning, certainly caution over sustainability commitments, but also care and restraint about overreacting to rhetoric from either side.”Jenny Sucov is a journalist and editor who focuses on health and well-being. She has worked for companies and publishers including Hinge Health, EverydayHealth.com, Canyon Ranch, Real Simple, and Prevention.(Feature photo by Adamkaz/iStock by Getty Images)

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