From Day One | Stories

When CEOs Talk Tough, What Should HR Leaders Bring to the Conversation?

Remember the days when CEOs spoke honeyed words about the irreplaceability of great talent and promised to shield workers from burnout and grinding daily trips to the office?Now, however, the tone of employee relations has changed. One after the other, CEOs march through our news feeds, declaring that employees are acting entitled, resistant to change, and dispensable. Reddit’s CEO has accused employees of not working hard and Uber’s CEO recently joined a growing cohort of executives who have told employees to return to the office or beat it. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, for his part, ordered workers back to the office five days a week, said AI will shrink the workforce, and that employees had better figure out “how to get more done with scrappier teams.” Earlier this year, Shopify’s chief executive told employees not to request new hires unless they can prove AI can’t do the job.With prominent CEOs going rogue from the chorus of empathy, how can chief HR officers adapt to the new tone? To some degree, CEOs are being transparent about new economic realities. But when executives are feeling like they can shrug off pressure to consider worker well-being or make good on prior commitments, what is a CHRO to do? This is where CHROs can be caught in the middle. Their role is help promote organizational success, but part of that mission is to make their company a great place to work. CHROs occupy a vital role in the C-suite, serving as liaison between employers and the employed, and as a result, a cooperative CHRO-CEO relationship is required. In fact, a change in CEO leads to the exit of nearly three-quarters of CHROs, said Rosanna Trasatti, CEO at Eleva Executive Leadership Advisory, during Fortune’s recent Workplace Innovation Summit. For the newest generation of CHROs, part of the job is making top executives palatable to employees and to the public. The head of HR is “one of the few people at an organization who has both the legitimacy and the duty to provide feedback to the CEO when their behavior goes against stated organizational values,” Alex Kirss of Gartner told From Day One. Kirss, who leads the CHRO-effectiveness research team in Gartner's HR practice, added: “The CHRO’s role is not to be a disciplinarian, but rather a coach to help their CEO be the best version of themselves.” Unless there’s a clear ethical violation that a company’s board of directors needs to know about, Kirss said, feedback to the CEO should be private and confidential. Then, the CHRO should give the CEO some space to reflect and pick out what they’ll do next.In many cases, CEOs will listen to feedback from their C-suite colleagues and employees at large. When the companies Klarna and Duolingo said they would begin replacing employees with artificial intelligence, the idea was so unpopular that both CEOs reversed course, at least in part. Earlier this year, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon apologized for cursing in an in town hall meeting while expressing his annoyance at organized resistance to his RTO edicts. While high-profile CEOs may be vocal, but “our research shows that 95% of CEOs prefer to stay out of the limelight,” said Josh Bersin, the HR analyst and CEO of the Josh Bersin Co.On the other hand, some notable CEOs have simply rejected dissent. Bloomberg columnist Beth Kowitt noted that quashing dissent has been added back into the playbook. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has reportedly ousted his critics of his leadership style and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is supposedly uninterested in hearing input from employees.The CEO Class Already Has a Mistrust Issue With the PublicThe viral reaction to a moment captured on video last week, when tech CEO Andy Byron was seen on a concert “kiss cam” embracing his chief people officer Kristin Cabot, underscored the rising public mistrust of C-suite leadership right now. When the episode prompted scrutiny of Byron's track record as a corporate leader, a checkered past emerged. As chief revenue officer for a previous employer, Cybereason, “multiple former employees said Mr. Byron would lash out against employees who disagreed with him, including threatening to fire them. ‘You couldn’t challenge him,’ a former employee who worked for Mr. Byron said,” as reported at the time in The Information, a tech-industry journal.Indeed, part of the public response to the moment seemed to be fueled by a growing trust gap between corporate executives and the general public, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor of management at Yale University, told the Wall Street Journal. “There’s a certain schadenfreude associated with this,” he said. “Here’s a takedown of the ‘haves’ versus the ‘have nots.’”Where does this mean we stand in employee relations, between the cycle of threats vs. rapprochement? Some observers wonder if we’re witnessing the end of corporate empathy—at least for now. The balance of power is changing hands, and for the most part, employers are getting their druthers. “The shift in tone marks a shift in power now that companies are shrinking their white-collar staff. With jobs harder to find, many workers are seeing perks disappear and their grievances ignored,” wrote Chip Cutter in the Journal.How new is the tough talk in corporate America? “I’m not clear how much changed in the first place,” said Alison Taylor, NYU professor and author of Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World, in a call with From Day One. “I think what we’re really doing is speaking the quiet part out loud.”The Trump Factor in Executive ToneMuch of the current condescension among some CEOs seems licensed by President Trump, who has attacked the integrity and competence of his own workers, describing the more than 2 million federal workers as “replaceable.” This is not the tone CEO have traditionally embraced. “CEOs live pretty scripted professional lives. They’re trained to tell investors nothing, read prepared texts for town halls, and stick to talking points on TV,” the journalist Liz Hoffman wrote in a Semafor Business newsletter earlier this year. “Now they see Trump speaking freely, and with few consequences … corporate America is unshackled, and the mics are everywhere.”The Trump factor has applied not just to tone but to substance as well. Take, for example, the very public tarnishing of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Since Trump signed an executive order prohibiting DEI programs in federal agencies and government contractors, many huge companies, including Walmart and Target have scrubbed mentions of DEI from their career pages or publicly announced retirement of the programs. For many executives, however, DEI is problematic only in name. “In my experience, here’s what most CEOs believe to be true: a diverse and engaged workforce is good for business; talking about DEI externally is not,” wrote Fortune’s Diane Brady in the CEO Daily newsletter. “Though plenty of companies have publicly disavowed their DEI initiatives, other leaders are wondering how to quietly continue building a workforce that reflects their values in this climate.”Cosmetics company E.L.F Beauty is doubling down on its DEI efforts, with CEO Tarang Amin appearing on CNN to talk about their commitment. And Dimon of JPMorgan, appears unintimidated by activist investors intent on challenging the company’s DEI programs. “Bring them on,” he said in an interview with CNBC at Davos this year.In this environment, CHROs will need to choose their battles when it comes to managing their CEOs. Those HR leaders, Bersin said, will have to take “a more proactive role in executive coaching, crisis management, and internal communications.” Mitigating reputational risks will take stronger governance structures and messaging plans. His guidance: What CEOs say publicly should be well-considered about reflecting the company’s values. Since companies wield a great amount of influence in individuals’ lives, they will be called on to respond to a growing mix of economic, political, and environmental pressures. Responding in a careful way will call for new corporate initiatives and management skills. “These are still companies full of real human beings who are a mix of opinions and races and genders,” Taylor said. “Some of them are going to be affected by some of these decisions, and they’re going to be looking, in many cases, to their employer for protection, for advice, for policies–for all sorts of things.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Featured photo: Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who told his workers this year that they can go elsewhere if they don't like his RTO changes, at a conference in 2023. AP photo by Eric Risberg)

Opinion BY Bill Saporito | June 30, 2025

The Jobs Aren't Getting Done: How the Immigration Crackdown Is Hurting Business

The resistance to President Trump’s immigration crackdown began with dramatic street theater. The scenes got uglier by the day. Masked, heavily armed agents from the Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) agency descended on workplaces where immigrants are employed and hauling them away, some in front of their terrified children. In Los Angeles, local protests over the sweeps prompted the White House to federalize California’s National Guard and dispatch U.S. Marines, purportedly to restore order and protect federal buildings. A U.S. senator was forcibly removed and arrested at a press conference by Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem. Now, however, resistance is coming from other quarters. Business owners—farmers, restaurateurs, meatpackers, hoteliers—are finding their operations under siege. And understaffed. They’re letting their Congressional reps know it; and alarmed farmers, with a shortage of workers to pick their crops, complained to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins. In Florida, State Senator Ileana Garcia, co-founder of Latinas for Trump, labeled the raids as “unacceptable and inhumane.”The us-vs.-them tension that has characterized America’s relationship with its immigrants has been a feature of national politics for centuries. Today it is a focal point of the second Trump administration. After all, making migrants the targets of MAGA helped get Trump elected. But support for mass deportation is now being viewed in the harsh reality of its execution. And harsh may underestimate the level of cruelty involved in the detentions. No wonder there are some reverberations. That’s why Trump, no stranger to vacillation, briefly reversed course, ordering ICE to stop raiding farms, hotels and restaurants, tweeting that “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.” Days later, in the face of blowback from MAGA’s hard-liners, he reverted to TACO mode and ordered the raids to resume.The friction is playing out within the Administration too. Weeks before, former First Buddy Elon Musk clashed with America Firster Steve Bannon over immigration: Musk wants to allow more tech emigres, while Bannon wants to tighten the screws on programs such as H-1B visas. Given that crypto bros like Mark Zuckerberg backed the Trump campaign with hundreds of millions of PAC money, the faceoff had a particular edge to it.The internal politics aside, the heavy-handed ICE tactics are hitting a nerve with most people. Already, 54% of Americans are against increasing the raids, according to a recent Pew poll. More videos of parents being torn away from their children, or ICE agents arresting American citizens for being Hispanic, won’t play well. Nor should they: this is not the view of America that most Americans want to see. And it’s counterproductive.A Long and Fraught Dependency on Immigrant LaborThe conflicted relationship with immigrants, who we have always relied on to do the actual work of building the nation and the economy, actually predates the nation. You can trace it all the way back to Peter Stuyvesant and New Amsterdam in the 17th century. Stuyvesant, the director general of New Amsterdam, initially resisted some non-Dutch immigrants but lost that battle to the practical priorities of developing New Amsterdam as a global trading hub. (Which, to be clear, included the slave trade.)Our tortured history with new arrivals vacillates between exploitation and demonization, as befits the times and the politicians. The No Nothings, or “American” party, of the 1850s were anti-Catholic—and thus by definition anti-immigrant. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Gentleman’s Agreement of 1907 discriminated against Chinese and Japanese emigrants. Yet the exploitation of immigrant labor proved to be one of America’s great bargains: workers accepted low wages and sometimes brutal conditions because the U.S. did indeed promise far more opportunity than did their native countries. Immigrants labored in the steel mills of Pittsburgh (those of Slavic origin were referred to generically as “hunkies”), in the brass works in Connecticut, the thread mills in Massachusetts, the meatpacking plants in Chicago, the auto plants in Detroit, and the coal mines in Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia. And on farms from Minnesota to Louisiana, New Jersey to California. New York City, where 40% of the population is foreign-born, could not thrive without immigrants, and that’s been true of most big U.S. cities for the last two centuries. (My family arrived in New York’s teeming Little Italy from Naples in the late 19th century.)Within this pool of immigrants was a steady stream of entrepreneurs such as Amadeo Pietro Giannini, who founded the Bank of Italy in San Francisco in the aftermath of the Great Earthquake. You may know that institution by its current name: Bank of America. Or Adolphus Busch and Eberhard Anheuser, Germans who formed what would become the great American beer company, Anheuser-Busch. Later came Andy Grove, the Hungarian co-founder of Intel; and Google’s co-founder, the Russian born Sergey Brin. And yes, the South Africa via Canada émigré Elon Musk, whose auto company is named after the astonishing Serbian immigrant Nicola Tesla, whose own genius paved the way for the electric grid that powers the device you are using to read these words.Why America Needs Immigrants to Fuel Its Future EconomyToday, from a demographic perspective, the U.S. cannot achieve significant economic growth unless it increases the supply of people. GDP growth is proportional to population growth and population growth has declined from 1% in 2000 to 0.5% in 2025 and is projected to fall further. The current birthrate is at a record low. The demographics also tell us that the ratio of older people to the working-age population is expanding. We can’t solve the coming Social Security insolvency unless there are more working-age people. People who weren’t necessarily born here.Immigrants help solve those demographic issues: they’re younger, have a higher birthrate than citizens, and are clearly willing to work and contribute to their communities. And while Congress debates the deficit, immigrants—legal or not—are paying taxes and contributing to Social Security. In fact, in 2023, households led by undocumented immigrants alone paid nearly $90 billion in taxes, according to the American Immigration Council. Meanwhile, the median pay of immigrants was about 16% below native-born Americans in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s known as value for money.And immigrants are not the people that Trump and his anti-immigration extremist Stephen Miller have so viciously characterized. Immigrants are less likely than American citizens to commit a crime. Despite claims that they suck up state and federal resources, their labor participation rate is higher than Americans. Immigrants, in fact, are more likely to start a business and create jobs. They are more likely to build your house or pick your vegetables. Or take care of your children or your aging parents. The greatest danger most Americans face from an immigrant is if you got hit by one who fell of your roof while repairing it.While we need more special people like Steve Jobs, whose father was a Syrian immigrant, the greater demand is for people willing to fill the everyday jobs that make the economy go. What we currently lack, though, is better a path to citizenship, a middle way that balances the nation’s requirements against the overwhelming desire of non-Americans to get here. Yet bipartisan efforts in Congress to reform immigration law has repeatedly collapsed, at least partly because conservatives have found it to be such a powerful wedge issue.The economic and social cost of the current immigration crackdown is going to become even more visible in the coming months. Summer is prime time for industries that rely on immigrants. Corn and tomatoes, peaches and peas, and plumbs and cherries have to be harvested nationwide. Hotels and resorts require staff to take care of vacationers. And at many rural hospitals, the July inflow of residents and medical students relies heavily on foreigners. This is also prime time for homebuilding, and we’re short of new homes. But the White House has created a double whammy that’s likely to make homes more expensive and less available by reducing the labor pool and increasing the cost of materials through tariffs.Meanwhile, there are 7.4 million job openings as of April, according to the Jolts data from BLS. As for all those manufacturing jobs Trumps thinks he can reshore, he might want to inquire whether anyone wants them. Manufacturers are currently short 400,000 workers.That doesn’t sound like a winning proposition; nor is our current immigration policy. With his poll numbers declining across the board, it’s quite likely that Trump could soften his anti-immigrant stance and the ICE raids. Whatever Americans may think of the crackdown as social policy, if the economy weakens (which looks to be the case), we will once again realize that as an economic policy, xenophobia is a loser.Bill Saporito is a veteran business journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and Washington Post. Previously, he worked as an editor at large at Inc. magazine, an assistant managing editor at Time, and as a senior editor at Fortune. He has written for From Day One on the power gap among labor unions, the myth of the “woke” corporation, and the perils of getting technology and people misaligned.(Featured photo: Seasonal immigrants picking strawberries near Salinas, Calif. Photo by rightdx/iStock by Getty Images)