How does employee activism manifest itself these Covid-19 days? Good question since people aren’t going to the office for the most part. There are several ways which are worth companies thinking about. Reputation is always at stake.

The first way for employee activism to activate is in person, even in this Covid era. This is how an employee at Adidas, the sports retailer, pushed for workplace change in an environment that she felt had incidents of racism. Julia Bond had been an assistant designer for a year when she wrote a letter to the company’s North America leadership and made it public. Her interview in the New York Times Daily podcast was impressive because of her persistence in getting Adidas to address inequality that she and other employees experienced. Adidas has now pledged a number of initiatives to address issues of representation and racial disparity: among others, a commitment to hire Black and Latino employees for 30 percent of new positions and to fund scholarships for Black students. But Julia’s stand up protest at HQ every day at noon has continued. Julia says that she wants an “acknowledgment and apology” from Adidas before she stands down. The activism has been going on for months.

The second way employee activism can manifest itself is through Zoom or other virtual ways. One example comes from a teacher who joined a Zoom call with other teachers and a union organizer after hearing that a coworker had lost his job for speaking up about pay (presumably). Others joined in and before long, the group expanded to other schools and union discussions were on their way. The news made the Washington Post and on goes the story.

New software and tools to mobilize workers are also helping employees get together to create the change they want. Coworker.org has experienced a huge surge in interest. It is a platform that allows employees to crowdsource campaigns to publicly pressure companies to treat workers better. As they say on their site, “At Coworker.org, we deploy digital tools, data, and strategies in service of helping people improve their work lives.” For example, they were involved in getting Starbucks to make mask wearing a standard policy through their online petition platform. Petitions work well online.

Employee activism has become increasingly normalized, Covid or not. Employees are seeing how they can make change happen by using collection action and their peers are watching. Watching employee activism in motion lessens the fear of speaking out. Strength in numbers can move companies to change their policies or behavior. Companies need to get ready for this new employee disruption.