Business support for the voice raises questions about the role of corporates in society

Culture Amp founder and chief executive Didier Elzinga.

Those corporates that dropped their knitting and took up the voice have been given the rounds of the kitchen – to continue the domestic theme – this week.

Critics say the big end of town misused shareholders’ money and proved they were out of touch with 60 per cent of Australians. The decision by some companies to give tax-deductible donations to the Yes case has been labelled elitist, and chief executives and boards have been accused of going well beyond their core job of making a profit.

It’s not the first time corporations have been attacked for ­entering the public square on ­social issues: six years ago, when the Yes case in the same-sex marriage plebiscite was backed by 61.6 per cent of the population, there were some complaints against companies that had supported the move. But there was not much mileage in criticising companies for being out of touch with 38.4 per cent of the population – even if the plebiscite resulted in a big change to our legislation.

The voice referendum was of a different order, given it was about changing the Constitution not just as act of parliament. And with its defeat, the pushback against corporate Australia has been stronger. It throws up some interesting questions.

If it’s just a numbers game (the 60 v 40 argument) then corporations would have been justified in backing the No case last weekend, right? If the corporate donations (when finally revealed as required by January) turn out to be at about the same quantum as moneys given to other causes – such as the arts or Indigenous literary programs or particular communities affected by flood and fire – that too will be OK?

Is all corporate philanthropy a poor used of shareholders’ money, or only that flowing to causes or activities we don’t like?

These are serious questions that go to the core of how we see the role of corporations, those huge wealth creators and employers which enormous power to shape our society.

Fifty years ago, Milton Friedman, that uber-supporter of free markets, was very clear: he argued companies must give money ­directly to shareholders who could then make individual decisions about the kind of society they wanted.

Neal A. Hartman, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, wrote a couple of years ago, that Friedman’s view “shaped much of the hyper-charged deal-making of the 1980s and much of the corporate world’s intense focus on shareholder value as a measure of performance”. But as corporations grew in size and power, citizens increasingly were less prepared to see them quarantined from society with responsibility only to those who held shares.

Indeed, public thinking about the role of companies in the lives of their employees has been turned on its head. For some it has gone too far, with support of the voice as exhibit one in corporates’ journey to “wokeism”.

But it is possible to see corporates filling a void which they themselves created.

As work has become all-consuming, as we have embedded the two-income family in our economy; as church and family and community ties fragment; as civil society shrinks, where are the shared spaces for informal debate on social issues?

It’s more than 20 years since academic Robert Putnam wrote his book, Bowling Alone, tracking the demise of community groups. Others have detailed how the expansion of paid work for women means there’s no one with the time to protest about the freeway planned for their suburb, for example. When work is all-consuming, who has the bandwidth for the ratepayers’ association? What role then for those running our workplaces?

Didier Elzinga, the co-founder of successful HR platform Culture Amp, is one boss who took a stand on the voice.

He says the idea you can separate work neatly from everyday life is a privileged view.

“For better or for worse, work is increasingly a bigger and bigger part of people’s identity,” he says. “If you think back over, say 100 years or whatever, faith, community, family were more dominant parts of people’s everyday interactions and experiences.

“Now work might be the only place where you get to have some of these conversations … and so I think it has a really important role in allowing people … to feel safe in (discussing issues).”

Elzinga, who with co-founder Douglas English to put out an internal document to staff supporting the Yes case, argues the idea that companies should stick to their knitting is “antiquated”.

“There’s this idea that you can neatly separate business from everyday life and the truth of it is, we’re all people who go to work and then come home,” he says.

“So at worst, it’s a very privileged view to take. There are lots of people whose work life is severely impacted by what goes on in their life. So to tell people that when they’re at work, none of the issues they have as a ­person in the world should be an appropriate conversation … it’s the wrong way.

“Should we be able to talk about politics at work? Should we be able to talk about social issues at work? You absolutely have to be able to because you’ve got to allow your people to be their whole selves.”

Elzinga says that the question of whether organisations should support a cause is more complex: “It’s certainly something that I wrestle with. Once you get to a certain size, it’s impossible to think everyone in the organisation is going to feel the same way. So, you can’t say, ‘Hey, we’re just representing the view of everybody who works for us’, because it’s not likely that’s the case.”

That’s why he and English opted for a founders’ statement: “Our mission is to create a better world of work, so there are topics on which we want to add our voice because we see it as an important part of creating a better world. Better work exists inside a better world … We wanted to get out there and say, ‘Look, this is how we feel about it’. We’re not trying to force people to vote one way or the other, but we do want to raise the profile.”

Elzinga rejects the idea corporations must reflect the entire society: “Why should a small company with 1000 people … have to pretend that we know what the whole of Australia thinks and only speak if everybody agrees?

“What organisations that take a stance are seeking to do is to say to their marginalised people, ‘We see you, and we’re here for you, and even if others aren’t, we’ll create a space that allows you to explore whatever it is we’re doing’.

“Workplaces have a bigger and bigger role, because the conversations that they used to have in faith or other areas is with the difficult conversations. The workplace is increasingly an opportunity where you can discuss these things.”