Political correctness is killing company culture

The irony of writing this one is that I will probably drum up some heat for not being politically correct.

I don’t care.

Today we’re headed into contested waters.

There has been endless discussion around “quiet quitting,” work from home, and going back to the office. I swear, if I see one more mindless article quoting ignorant CEOs about the challenges of remote work, I may find an open manhole to fall into.* Most of these tales are from the haunted halls of Fortune 500 monsters, which are often far from cultural pedestals. These Goliaths can put on a clinic on how to artificially inflate your stock prices with buybacks, but cultural dignitaries they are not.

Every time I read one of these stories, I see corporations that are on their back, absolutely floundering in a puddle of their own fear-induced urine because their historic grip on the tight leash of employees is slipping.

In this final effort to maintain control, the CEOs are saying it’s hard to established culture with remote work. The managers are saying the employees aren’t as productive when remote. And in return, some employees are complaining back, saying that being in the office has networking advantages, leading to in-person employees getting promotions over remote ones.

(Side note: That last one is also indicative of poor management and leadership, and could be a post all its own—we’ll save a deeper dive for another day, but my goal today is to highlight the ignored reason why CEOs are grappling with remote vs. office). 

The assailants in these arguments point a firm finger at the remote employees, dubbing them lazy or deceptive, but that’s not it. Something else is at play. Our company’s team is small—12 full time employees, about 15 with part time—and we don’t see any correlation to productivity and location of the work being done.

The pandemic actually forced us to communicate better because everyone went remote and we couldn’t rely on in-person side banter. This built a better communication culture that has stayed intact since the return to the office. GoWild operates completely hybrid today. I don’t even know which of our local team members will be in the office on any specific day—we don’t have a minimum requirement.

I know thousands of small companies like us are also doing great. But the big corporations? They’re on their heels because they’re battling a culture that can’t transcend to a remote world. Remote work exposes employee communication for what it is (or isn’t) and lets skeletons out of the closet.

But the big companies are the ones news organizations love to write about, which has created this idea that remote work is tough to manage and not productive.

It’s a total farce.

Many large companies are scared because before any of this—the pandemic, recessions or quiet quitting—their cultures were already biased, toxic HR nightmares, or at the very least, built on a long list of hollow perks like free dinners. Remote life is exposing the demons. Remote technology documents companies’ festering blisters one screen shot at a time, and corporations are responding forcefully with lawsuits, paranoid tactics and a human relations ambush.

Today I’m sharing their nightmare, and why it’s actually a dream scenario for recruiting.

Remember—HR professionals are the soldiers

CEOs are wreaking havoc on HR teams right now to try and fix this problem before it goes mainstream (or to a courtroom). The result is a pursuit for "fairness" and policing of “political correctness” that is creating a narrative and expectations that are trickling down and stand a chance to ruin norms around company culture.

It’s not all companies, obviously. The larger the payroll, the more people you have slinging bureaucratic red tape like they’re holding a sweaty tape dispenser at a non-unionized Amazon shipping facility. As policies gain momentum in the news, though, and it can find its way down to smaller businesses over time.

Anecdotally, I’ve noticed a huge swing in discussion around what is politically correct or allowed in office places over the last two years. You have, too. Everyone knows the example of pronouns—but that’s surface level, as it’s a change that’s impacting external touch points of a company such as bio pages or email signatures, and doesn’t mean any real culture shift has happened. That’s not what I’m talking about. There are internal discussions happening that are living in borderline meaningless minutia, such as pondering if calling a team a “family” is brainwashing, if saying “guys” to a room of men and women is offensive, if the term Marketing Ninja is racist, etc.

(Side note: I am always working on being more inclusive. I have tried to stop saying “guys” for example, but I think drumming that up as a problem with a leader is an overreaction. I can’t stand seeing someone go full blast on an individual for this kind of stuff. Inclusiveness is great, but so is forgiveness and a path to redemption. Also, calling anyone a guru or ninja in a job listing is a desperate, failing attempt to look cool and recruit a 20-something-year old to do the job cheaper.)

Being inclusive is just a no-brainer for building confidence among your team and, well, common human decency. But I am not talking about protecting marginalized groups—that is important and far from today’s topic. Most of these large organizations are struggling with the fact their culture wasn’t inclusive in the office to begin with, so in a remote world, their exclusive locker room talk cultures are getting documented for the world to see with a screenshot and a Reddit thread. These screenshots also make great kindling for a lawsuit.

In response, CEOs are pushing HR teams to fix the problem en masse, which has ultimately put a sledge hammer in the hands of an HR professionals working with a team of double hex screws—they’re hitting everything head on to drive their messages when really, progress lies within the finesse of a right hand turn.

Brad, you’re out on a limb on this one

I know someone is thinking it—that I’m making all of this up. I’m not. These are wide scoping efforts to eradicate non-PC behavior from the workplace and it’s created a witch hunt for free thought and discourse. Some proof lies within the fact there is a budding parallel economy spurring from people who are fed up with it all. A lot of people have labeled the eradication behavior as “woke” but in reality, I don’t know how much we’re moving into a woke era of work vs. an era that protects the company against individual agency. Corporations are working against free speaking cultures where employees can learn, share and grow.

For example, it recently came out that Shopify had established “Channel Champions” to monitor its companies Slack channels for inappropriate behavior (seriously, you can’t make this up). Hiring company NARCs to snitch on team members for going off message is not as woke as it sounds—it’s actually approaching corporate fascism. Using the company tech to keep the messaging in line is as 1984 as it gets, regardless of the company’s political leanings or ties.

Business Insider has the report on Slack’s sneaky NARCs.

Alongside the chat police, I saw this recently: In a discussion on LinkedIn, people were debating the difference between a company's team being a “family” vs. a “community,” and the importance of great culture. People were really passionate about their teams, their loyalty to each other, and how they treat each other in adversity. It was a great thread, mostly concluding that sure, coworkers aren't blood, but they can be close to it.

Then, I stumbled into an absolute jaw dropping comment from an HR professional.

"I think saying family and community are both too strong,” she said. “The less emotional connection the better. It's a bundle of legal rights. A business transaction mainly."

While this is a horrible hot take from an HR employee, I’m going to defend HR teams right now and say much of this is the result of pressure from egomaniac leaders who are attempting to bleach employees of their individual personality and remove teammates who find comfort in a community. That’s because in a remote world, every conversation is documented in a Zoom recording, Slack chat or email. A team that feels comfortable together—like a family—may be more inclined to speak freely in these well-documented forums.

Before hybrid work places, a company’s true self hid in corner offices, hallways or break rooms. Bad cultures build small, toxic factions, sure. But it often gets pocketed into groups. Dissenters may bubble departmentally, but it could be caught and dealt with in quiet conference rooms. Rebels were never documented with a screen shot, or worse, allowed to be tossed into a Slack channel for hundreds of employees to give it the ol’ 👍response in support. It’s mutiny, one emoji response at a time.

Now in a remote world, it’s all on full display, and waiting to go viral at any minute. Every company is one leaked email or Slack message away from becoming a headline. “Rebel” or “rogue” employees can ask a question of the leader in this public forum, and the leader can choose to ignore it or be forced to answer it—and that’s it. Both can be uncomfortable for weak leaders. As a result, bad leaders are finding themselves pressured to lead more openly. Remote work has created a virtual Athens, demanding democratic thought, for every company.

The pursuit of sameness

Instead of risking offending someone or having their leadership questioned in the company’s arena, HR reps are advocating for "less emotional connection" to create a more “fair” environment.

Less bias sounds good right? No, not this time—it’s killing a fly with a machete. And I believe these actions are going to lead to a sea of sameness, not the diversity we hear Fortune 500s touting as a focus in a post-2020 landscape.

“Fairness” may contribute to hiring, but it’s being misused here. Fairness is great when protecting marginalized groups and ensuring them a fair hiring process. However, screening and hiring purely on hard skill alone is the opposite of fair, yet you see it advocated for in online discussions often. How likable someone is (a soft skill) can actually be a huge part of how it is to work with them. I'm not trying to be fair to the assholes, for example. In fact, I don't want them on our team at all and have fired people for simply being an asshole. That's what's fair—keeping my tenured team from having to deal with turds.

Legal rights and benefits are critically important for employment, too, but if anyone shows up to our hiring process and proceeds to solely negotiate the transaction of hire, that person will not get a job offer. They must show they align with our values and be a culture fit, and treating GoWild like a job instead of a mission will not earn an offer letter.

Many will point a finger back at me and say on the flip side, companies use culture as an excuse to have a less diverse hiring process. That’s a misunderstanding of culture. Culture is how the team operates, not who operates. I do, however, believe these large companies will reduce diversity in the long run with these approaches because they’re losing the most critical diversity for innovation—diversity of thought.

It doesn’t matter what color your skin is, what your sexual orientation is, or who you pray to—you can be a creative contributor to a team. But I believe many HR efforts have jumped the shark and are watering the workplace down culturally to protect the company from the documentation of their corporate cesspools. The innovators, creative thinkers and builders who need collaboration are not going to work in these environments, where “less emotional connection” is the goal. Never bet against a team member’s passion—eventually, they will follow passion over money, rank or accolades.

The talent exodus is coming

This new landscape is going to create a gold mine opportunity for small to midsize businesses to get the talent. A lot of people have job hopped recently, getting significant salary increases to work for larger firms. As talented people are dragged into this banal BS, they’re going to leave the safety of an established corporation. Intelligence wants to be challenged, because friction sharpens the mind.

Said another way, and if I boil all of this down to one sentence, here it is:

Smart people want to take risks, so if your company is attempting to de-risk your culture, you’re putting up a red flag for all future hires that your company does not innovate.

In order to innovate, you have to fail sometimes. You have to be able to speak freely. You have to be able to show your passions, and sometimes, your anger. These modern constructs and expectations are never going to jive with true creative processes.

I realize this is the initiative of the regime (ahem, mid/large cap CEOs) but we have to fight back. The long term impacts of this approach is going to be detrimental to culture if we let it take root, and it’s also diluting the important work HR teams can do. Companies like Microsoft, which are struggling to figure out how to manage in a remote landscape, are going to be the first to suffer but their hiring behaviors often trickle down.

After everything we've been through over the last few years, have we not learned to simply treat people like people? Small companies, this is your shot to lead with love and freedom of expression. You can do this well, and outperform your better-paying competitors. I am writing this long-winded message to tell you—this is your unfair advantage in hiring for the next five years.

If I ever find myself weighing digging ditches vs. joining a team for "legal rights" as a "business transaction," just hand me the shovel.

How to use the pursuit of politically correct to your advantage:

1) Disrupt the norm—create a culture that recruits

A bundle of legal rights won’t build a lasting culture or recruit great talent. Instead of leading with a benefits package that can’t compete with the Fortune companies, lead with your culture and how it sharpens employees’ skills.

2) Put “taking risks” into your values

You can’t just say “we take risks.” You have to live it. You have to have a process for it. Last week I mentioned Ed Catmull’s book “Creativity Inc.” and I will again, as it’s still the best how-to manual on building this culture. Read it.

3) See the person, not the transaction

As the big companies move towards fairness, they’re afraid to reward hard work or talent without metrics on paper. Take risks in hiring. Overpay someone in salary or give them titles they haven’t earned yet. Taking a leap of faith with an employee can discover diamonds in the rough, but also build princess loyalty among your team.

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*I realize the irony of writing one more article about it. I hope you find mine to be a hot take and unique.