Google says it’s ‘proud’ of its work with the US government, despite employees’ concerns

Earlier this year, more than 1,600 Google employees signed a petition opposing the tech company’s contracts with government agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). And, late last month, Alphabet’s president of global affairs, Kent Walker, responded, though not in the way employees were likely hoping.

Walker sent a memo to employees stating that “we have proudly worked with defence departments since Google’s earliest days and continue to believe that it is important to support national security in a thoughtful and responsible way,” the Financial Times reported.

“There is a mismatch between what leadership is saying and what employees want, and that’s really common…You’re coming from different perspectives with different objectives,” Deborah Grayson Riegel, executive and communication coach and co-author of Aim High and Bounce Back, told HR Brew. “The thing that struck me about it was the lack of acknowledgement that this is a fraught issue.”

What’s going on? Employers have the upper hand in the labor market, so some leaders, Grayson Reigel cautioned, may be acting “shortsighted.”

“Leadership took a pretty bold stand of how proud they were in the work that they were doing with the government,” she said. “What would have been more effective, in my opinion, is to have said, ‘we recognize that not everybody agrees,’ or ‘we acknowledge the following challenges.’”

Leaders who don’t acknowledge employees’ concerns can come across as lacking empathy, she added. This can have a downstream effect on recruitment and retention.

At a time when many employees are experiencing heightened emotions, a lack of acknowledgement from leadership can also resonate as “out of touch,” Brian Smith, founder of consulting firm IA Business Advisors and co-author of Individual Influence: Find the “I” in Team, told HR Brew.

“These issues are so emotionally charged that oftentimes you can read inconsistency into action…or you can read inconsistency in verbiage because you allow emotions to take over,” Smith said. “And, that goes for the organization as much as it does for the teams or the people on the teams.”

What HR can do. No matter the issue, Smith said HR pros and company leaders should allow employees to express their emotions, and acknowledge how their feelings impact the workplace.

“HR owes the people that they serve a place to to be heard and a place to talk through inconsistencies and to have those listened to, but also a place to align their emotions,” Smith said. “And understand that while we have these emotions and we still disagree, we’re not always going to get what we want.”

HR pros can also help employees find a path forward that feels aligned with their values, Grayson Riegel said.

“If they feel really strongly that the direction of the company is not aligned with them, [HR] might encourage or counsel them to think about how they might contribute to the work in a way that feels meaningful to them,” she said. “Also, let people know that if there’s a fundamental and foundational values disagreement, that they might be better off finding work somewhere else.”

In response to HR Brew’s request for comment, Jenn Crider, a spokesperson for Google, did not address Walker’s comments to employees, but said, “Google has more than 190K employees, so that’s less than .001% of the employees” who signed the petition opposing government contracts.