Starbucks, Uber, Facebook, and Google are big brands everyone knows and loves, well … for the most part. These companies also share something else in common: scandals that rocked the nation and the world.
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Starbuck recently came under fire when an employee called the cops on two African American men who were waiting inside the coffee shop for a friend, the two men were doing nothing wrong, but that didn’t stop the employee from claiming they were trespassing. Ultimately, this gaffe cost the company some bad PR and because of this mishap, employees were forced to undergo unconscious bias training.
When it comes to Uber, the company’s culture has regularly made headlines, and not in a good way! In 2017, the company’s former CEO, Travis Kalanick, was videotaped berating a driver and on top of that the company was reportedly underpaying its employees in New York by millions of dollars. Since then the company has been having a hard time recovering its public image and financial success.
Facebook has been in the news a lot lately, too, in a climate increasingly concerned about both privacy and “fake news.” In fact, Facebook has been so scandalous, Wired started keeping tabs on the company’s foibles throughout 2018, and it remains to be seen what the tech giant could be accused of in 2019.
As for Google, on November 1, 2018, Google employees around the world walked out of their offices in protest over how the company deals with sexual harassment. The protests came after a New York Times investigation detailed years of sexual harassment allegations, multimillion-dollar severance packages for accused executives, and a lack of transparency over the cases.
All four of these examples circle back to one overarching theme: company culture. And new research finds that jobseekers are willing to forgo a higher salary at a company that has a toxic culture, in favor of an employer that doesn’t make headlines.
Jobseekers Perspective About Company Culture
According to a recent survey of 540 full-time employees from business blog, The Manifest—most employees will not accept a job with higher pay from an employer that fails to act against sexual harassment.
Nearly 80% of employees will not tolerate a lack of action against sexual harassment. And employees will also not tolerate employers that sell user data without users’ knowledge (79%) or create environmental problems (72%).
Sexual harassment inflicts damage on a company’s workers, culture, and its bottom line. Toxic work cultures persist, however. According to a 2018 survey from the nonprofit Stop Street Harassment, 38% of women report experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace.
Ultimately, companies that fail to address sexual harassment will suffer increased turnover, diminished profits, and damage to their reputation.
Employees Motivated to Report Sexual Harassment
The Manifest’s survey found that just over 40% of employees (43%) claim they are likely to protest privately to a manager or supervisor if they learn that their company failed to act against sexual harassment.
After that, employees claim they’re most likely to quit (20%), leak the information to the news media (15%), or do nothing (7%). Employees who report sexual harassment at work are sometimes at risk for social isolation, retaliation, anxiety, and depression. Despite these hardships, most employees feel a need to act against unethical behavior that directly impacts coworkers or them.
Employees Most Tolerant of Employers with Differing Politics
While a toxic culture is out for many jobseekers, when it comes to politics, who you vote for has no bearing on a jobseeker’s willingness to accept an offer. More than half of employees (54%) are likely to accept a job with a higher salary from a company that makes political donations to candidates they dislike.
Furthermore, employees will tolerate if their company tries to stop labor unions from organizing (39%), uses legal loopholes to minimize tax liabilities (38%), collects sensitive data about customers (35%), and lobbies against consumer protection regulations (31%).
Overall, employees are more likely to tolerate disagreeable company behaviors that are driven by politics or economics, instead of ones that directly impact coworkers or them. However, we strongly urge employers not to partake in these behaviors, because they could result in bad PR further down the line.
In order to get jobseekers interested in your company, you must have a positive culture, and if you don’t, there are ways to fix this. In part two of this article, we’ll explore five ways to implement a new culture. To learn more about The Manifest findings, click here.