237: The Fallout: MillerKnoll and Clearlink's Pitiful Employee Town Halls

Imagine working for a company that gives you an amazing discount on office and gaming chairs. But this is your employee town hall meeting with the CEO. Don't ask about what are we going to do if we don't get a bonus? Get the damn $26 million. Spend your time and your effort thinking about the $26 million we need and not thinking about what you're going to do if we don't get a bonus. All right, All right. Could you imagine what those employees wanted to do with their chairs? Welcome to the Indestructible PR Podcast where we use current events and tested media and PR strategies to help prevent or manage a crisis and build an indestructible reputation. In this episode, let's dive into the story of what appears to be an awful CEO who was berating the company on an employee zoom call. No surprise, that call went viral, sparking outrage and prompting question about how CEOs treat their employees. In recent years, the importance of a CEO's reputation has become increasingly clear. The CEO is not only the face of the company, but they are also responsible for leading the organization and making critical decisions that affect the company's direction, growth and profitability. But in today's hyper connected world, a CEO's reputation can spread quickly and any negative perception can have a significant impact on that company or organization's success. I can say this as someone who works in public relations strategic communication. The CEO, the manager is a focal point of every single plan that I create. A strong leader can make for a strong communication plan. A weak leader or an absent leader or a leader that does not inspire can create a lot of problems both externally and internally. This is precisely what happened to Andy Owens. So she's the CEO of Miller Knoll. So this is a leading manufacturer in office furniture. And what I've come to learn, this company makes gaming chairs. That a lot of people told me online after I had posted information about this story on Twitter and TikTok and that they had like this one user said, I've been a user of their chairs for years and years. However, I will never buy another one again. And I had a number of people with comments saying that they would never shop there again. So there really is a reputational fallout and a cost to a lost reputation. Now for Andy Owens, this is a CEO of Miller Knoll. All you have to do is Google Andy A n D I and all of the articles will come up and you will see and watch and hear the now infamous moment that the Miller Knoll CEO told her employees to leave Pittie City. So if you Google Pity City, she will ever be linked to that line. Now what is the line? What does Pity City mean? At the end of her tirade, she had said, you can visit Pity City, but you can't live there. So people leave Penny City. Let's get it done. Now you heard at the top of the podcast an edited part of the video. So her the video that went Viral is a 1 minute and 20 second video from her remarks during a March town hall meeting. So that naturally went viral like many do. And we don't know where it landed first. I would suspect Reddit. That's where these types of videos land. And then it gets picked up. So it was picked up by cnn, cbs, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg. I mean, it went everywhere and it went viral. It's all over social media. And I knew this was a big story because since Friday I had posted a TikTok about an appearance I had on NBC News Now. And I was talking about the debacle of the Bud Light Dylan Mulvaney campaign. And I was saying the true debacle was my appearance on NBC News now to discuss the Bud Light Dylan Mulvaney marketing campaign. Because they're so nice. The booker there does a great job of calling me, but it was very last minute and I was, I had a choice. I had a Sophie's Choice to make. Do I look okay or do I get the content down? But I didn't have a choice in the matter because my Internet went down. I accidentally pulled it out of my wall. So I was a scrambling. So it wasn't one of my better appearances. But when I had posted a video about that experience, I received so many comments about Andy Owens and about this, you know, viral video. And as I watched it and I saw it and I thought, okay, yeah, I get why people are coming to me to, to riff on it. But I didn't know what I could possibly say. Part of it, you know, the benevolent part of me and, and the there by the grace of God go I part of me. I don't like trashing people. I don't like going online or on TikTok and bringing people down. They already have a viral moment. Who am I to make it worse? It gets a lot easier when they do not so great things. But what I typically wait for is the response. I don't like to hit people when they're down. I want to kick them when I hear the response because if the response aligns with that type of thinking and that type of behavior. Well, then kind of, they, they might deserve it a little. But again, I don't do it for the purpose of bringing people down. I do it for the purpose of teaching. So no one else makes the same mistake and let it be said. Editor's note here Every time someone takes me on there honestly in my head, maybe it's the imposter syndrome in me thinking, who am I to sit and judge people's apologies? I mean, really, at what point is my time going to come? Something's going to happen to me, and then I'm the one that's going to have to make an apology for some viral incident and then people start slamming me. Some Gen Z PR person comes on, says she sucks anyway, until that time, I continue so Andy Owens remarks that were picked up in this viral video, they the comments that really took her sideways was in response to a question from an employee who asked her whether they would receive their bonuses despite the economic downturn caused by the COVID 19 pandemic. Now, I want to put a pause here for a moment to speak in defense of all CEOs who are struggling with getting their companies back on track with employees. I mean, I run a company, you know, I have people who work for me. I understand what it's like to run a company and to make sure that, you know, employees are, you know, working at the level that you want them to or that, you know, that you're compensating them. And sometimes it can get frustrating. But when I have that frustration, I always think back to myself as a, you know, as a leader, as a founder of a company and say, okay, well, what am I doing to help them? Like, what struggles are they going through? You know, how can I help them do their job? And that's just my makeup. Maybe that would make me a bad CEO because I think of other people. And maybe there's a, there probably is a personality study out there that the more probably selfish and driven you are, the better leader that you may make. So it may be good for profits, it may be good for efficiency, but it is not good for morale. And I'll say this right here. From my perspective, in the work that I do, as I think I've mentioned on, on this podcast before, I now, in addition, you know, to working on retainer and working on plans with clients, I have, like, significant clients. I take on just hourly consulting. And more and more and more and more people will call with issues that are external, but so quickly it just boomerangs back inside the building and it Comes down to leadership. I cannot tell you how many times this happens. So if you're a leader listening to this right now, take a moment to think, how am I treating my employees? What is the culture of the workplace? Even if it's a small business, a small association, whatever you are, this is a good time to check that, because the CEO, Andy Owens, and then another CEO who I'm going to mention, they're probably very good at doing their jobs, but they're losing focus and losing the bubble on the employee. Now, in the perspective, in the context of all this is COVID 19. We do know that there are a lot of businesses out there that are struggling. Finding employees, finding competent employees, finding employees who will work up to the standards pre Covid. And somewhere in the middle of employees making their demands and CEOs making their demands, we have to recognize that the environment has shifted. The work environment has shifted. So many of these CEOs want to go back to a time where people would grind at their jobs. They would drive to get to their job on time, and they would sit in a cubicle all day, and they'd sit on a computer all day, and then they would go home and their life would be their job. COVID 19 happens. People get used to the idea of working at home and they want to keep that going, particularly parents, particularly mothers. I'm going to say it. Parents who are caregivers to children or caregivers maybe to their other parents, you know, partners. I don't want to just say it's, it's parents, but it's, you know, all families. There's a struggle there. And there's a lot of single parents out there. A lot of single mothers out there. There. COVID 19 was brutal on them. So now they, they want to have an employment. They've seen what it's like. We've learned that we can work from home. We can work virtually. If you're going to have a virtual town hall, well, then your employees can work virtually as well. You've made the concession of a virtual town hall. You might need to make concessions for your employees. And I'll say, in my work, I see it, I am talking to managers and CEOs and telling them, like, hey, have you ever thought about giving your employees the day off after holiday? Have you ever thought about, you know, more virtual working, you know, more flexibility? Sometimes they just don't see it. Now back to Andy Owens. Now, I had mentioned that the comment came because someone was asking about their bonuses. They wanted to know, you know, if they had this extra money coming in. Now, naturally, COVID 19 there is an economic downturn for a lot of companies out there. But Andy Owens response Don't ask about what we are going to do if we don't get a bonus. Get the damn 26 million. Spend your time and your effort thinking about the 26 million we need and not thinking about what you're going to do if we don't get a bonus. That is a money person, that is a frustrated person thinking that their employees are not working. But it is very difficult for any employee to listen to that rant. When Owen received $3.9 million in incentive pay last year, and that was on top of her $1.1 million fixed salary, and that's published. That's public information that makes it very, very difficult to sit through a rant like that. And that's what CEOs and managers need to understand. It's employees access to information, its employees, yes, making demands, but they're not crazy demands. You not only did we have COVID 19 in the pandemic, but we also have younger employees who are moving up. Younger employees who are familiar with virtual environments. They went to school now in a virtual environment. They're learning virtually. I teach a college class, you know, a lot of it is in the classroom, but a lot of the quizzes and the information is online. These employees who are coming up, they are digital natives. They are used to efficiencies. Digitally coming into an office and sitting at a desk is so unnatural to these generations. So you're going to have that retribution. And that retribution is going to come in a form of them downloading a video and then posting it to social media. This is going to keep happening over and over and over again. So we're at that midpoint, you know, right now. So she is talking about efficiencies and how we can be better. But it got lost on these employees. Now, naturally, after that video went viral and when I say viral that I haven't looked at the metrics, but I base it on the feedback that I get on social media. When I get a lot of traction, a lot of people asking me about something, then I know, okay, this is hot because it's getting in front of all these people. And this video struck a chord. I don't know if it was in her tone and in her language or her entitlement, but it really fell flat. Now, I had posted a TikTok, the link is in the show notes, and I had only pulled a quote from the Statement, the official statement from npr, because that's the only place where I could find it. And someone on TikTok told me that they're a sponsor of NPR and that's likely why they put the statement to or gave the statement to npr, which tracks. That makes sense. But also release an apology to the local Grand Rapids paper. So, according to MLive, that's the online version of it, Andy Owen emailed an apology to her staff once the video went viral, bringing all this unwanted local and national attention. So the headline says, I feel terrible. Millenol CEO says after employee Bonus rant goes viral. Also stated, I want to be transparent and empathetic. And as I continue to reflect on this instance, I feel terrible that my rallying cry seemed insensitive. She said what I'd hoped would energize the team to meet a challenge we've met many times before landed in a way that I did not intend, and for that, I am sorry. How does that statement land with you? That still reads like a statement of someone who is not going to acknowledge what she did. She is acknowledging that it landed the wrong way. Again, this is another spin on blaming the victim. She's blaming the public for making it go viral. She's blaming the employees for them not understanding what she was trying to do. She calls it a rallying cry. That quote seemed insensitive. Oh, Ms. Owen, it didn't seem insensitive. It was insensitive. And that's the difference. There's a nuance when writing statements. If you write a statement to get around acknowledging what you did, it will not do the job. This is a statement that called for her to say, I apologize. This was not a rallying cry. This was a rant. She needed to apologize for that rant, the demeaning rant, and what she said to her employees. She needed to completely own up to it. My guests, the employees, they're not buying that statement. Now, she did go on to say, nothing will lessen the power and strength of our collective team. My appreciation for each of you is huge, and I will continue to do everything I can to help us meet our shared goals. Thank you for your hard work, your grace, which means forgive me, and for the commitment you show to one another and our company every single day, blah, blah, blah. I call that pablum. It's just. It's just vanilla speak. It means nothing. But this is why I believe that these types of statements really do reveal the personality and the behavior of the CEO. So I don't think anything's going to change there. I mean, unless she loses her job, which I don't think that's going to happen. They'll take a dip in sales. I mean, definitely, they absolutely will take a dip in sales and there will be a cost to a reputation. Now, the outrage that it sparked was about insensitivity and particularly at a time when employees are struggling with financial uncertainty and fear of job loss. And this incident also draws attention to the broader issues of leadership and empathy in the workplace. There could be some people out there who do defend her comments that yes, they were blunt, but they're necessary, that companies employees need to focus on financial realities and that that is a CEO's job. But I believe this and this is straight from my job. The bigger issue, it's emblematic of the larger problem about the toxic workplace. The toxic workplace, in my opinion, is becoming the big crisis factor for companies now because something could happen that just leads you into, you know, a PR bump or a PR wrinkle. But take that wrinkle, put it with an employee who is pissed off. Now you have a viral problem, now you have a social media problem. And those are the problems that become big. I've done many TikToks and social media posts and many podcasts about the ranting CEO. So if you're a CEO or you're a manager or you have the ear of leadership, understand we are still grappling with COVID 19. Even though the pandemic isn't at the height it once was, the hangover is still here. Corporate leaders need to understand that nowadays we have to prioritize well being. If you want success for your employees, you have to prioritize their well being. You want to foster a culture of empathy, understanding. That's how you build a stronger, more resilient teams. They're better to navigate the challenges of all the uncertainty. So you need to treat your employees well and understand what they are going through. And hopefully we can all leave Pity City behind for good. Now, you might think this is the end of the podcast. It's just about one CEO. Not so. Because in my post, in my TikTok post about Andy Owen, everybody's asking me to talk about Clear Link. Clear Link, Clear Link. Like, well, what's clear Link? I don't know which Zoom town hall bothers me more. I think it's this one. But the clearlink CEO James Clark, this is a company out of Draper, Utah. He also had a virtual town hall and his town hall is with the camera, like facing up CEOs here's a little. Just quick tip. If you're going to do a zoom town hall, don't do it from your laptop at a table. Just prop up the laptop, you know, eye level. Okay. In the midst of this virtual town hall meeting, James Clark was speaking the same rallying cry as Andy Owens. It was about working. It was about trying to rally the troops to come to work, do the work. If you watch the entire video, which I'll include in the show notes, he talks about, you know, employees not showing up, employees not even opening up their laptops, employees using a lot of chatgpt to write content. Okay, all of those accusations could be fair. All of those charges that he's making, those absolutely could be happening at the company again. However, the rallying cry really turned out to be a rat because he was talking about the blood, sweat and tears that he is expecting from his employees. I'm going to play a clip from his town hall. It's edited for time and edited for viral. You know, it's edited for content. But you can get a sense of what this town hall was all about. There's not one of you here, and I challenge any one of you to outwork me. But you won't. I sacrificed. And those of you that are here have sacrificed greatly to be here as well, to be away from your. Your family. I. I learned from one of our leaders that in the midst of hearing this, this message went out and sold their family dog head of humanization. Pet humanization. I don't even know what that means. All that means to me is that he is not a dog person. I'm calling you on that. There's no way for all my dog people out there, and I am a dog person. Anyone who's listened to my episode about losing my fin bar, which I'm coming up to the year anniversary of losing finbar, so I'm going to struggle with this. I could not believe that an employee would sell a dog. And he also said, I mean, all the headlines, you know, on social media was, was about an employee selling a dog. I assumed it was a man, but he was claiming it was a single mom. But again, I'm calling BS on that. Call BS on that. As a single mom whose dog. My dog was my therapy dog. My dog was my companion. I would never get rid of my dog. I might tell my kids I would have to get rid of my kids. Well, no, actually, I would never get rid of my kids. I got rid of someone else before I got rid of the dog. But my dog is so important but that says everything you need to know about that CEO. So even in that rant he is talking again about how employees are not doing the job. But everything you need to know about that CEO was baked right into that town hall and frankly gets all the viral justice he deserves. Now in every episode I leave you with one easy to remember takeaway to help you build an indestructible reputation. That's your indestructible PR tip. I can assume that you can guess what it's going to be if I just pause here. Do you want to just say it? Yell it in your car or while you run or at the gym? Seth employ town hall meetings on Zoom or on Microsoft Teams. Whatever Google Meet they are recorded. Okay? Always be mindful of what you say and how you treat your team. All it takes is one employee, one download and one social media platform. That's all for today. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.