Frank helps create campaigns around issues you care about and want to see improved at work. Campaigns will go through several phases before demands are delivered to management. In this post, we’ll walk you through what to expect at each stage and what you should be focused on.
1. Creating your campaign
You can create a campaign about any issue that’s affecting your workplace. This could be wages or benefits, or something specific to your employer like hiring practices or diversity and inclusion.
Your campaign will lay out the importance of your issue and make the case for why things must change in your workplace. You’ll be asked to provide the background information about why this issue matters. We recommend being specific about the change you want to see.
Publishing your campaign means your coworkers will be able to view it inside Frank. Before you take this step, you can invite coworkers who are already on Frank to join you as organizers. You can also add PDFs or images to help support your efforts. Once you publish your campaign, it’ll be visible to your coworkers in Frank to vote and comment on, but you can always make edits if needed up until your campaign reaches solidarity.
2. Campaign published
The goal of any campaign is to reach solidarity so that you and your coworkers have more leverage in your workplace to demand change through collective action. As a campaign creator, you’ll take an active role in shaping this message and helping coworkers understand what’s at stake. At this stage, it’s important to regularly engage with your group members about your campaign and their willingness to take action.
You might already know how your coworkers feel about your campaign issue — that’s great. You’ll build solidarity quickly and move onto the next stage of communicating your demands to management. If you haven’t had many conversations with coworkers on your issue, that’s okay, too — Frank allows you to publish a campaign, discuss it in one centralized, private place, and get feedback from coworkers.
3. Solidarity reached
Workers in your group will vote on your campaign with varying degrees of support. This phase may last a long time or happen very quickly — it all depends on your success in communicating why your campaign matters. You may find that you have to clarify elements of your campaign after speaking with coworkers. You’ll also notice that it takes different amounts of time to get your coworkers involved. Some coworkers are going to be enthusiastic about joining Frank while others may need more attention. That’s okay — organizing takes time and trust.
Votes have weighted levels of support — from ‘does not support’ to ‘ready to take action’ — which count towards your total solidarity score. Once your solidarity score reaches 75%, you’re able to take the next step of communicating to management. All workers are, of course, free to communicate directly to coworkers or their management at any time, but in order to send a campaign with Frank, we work to ensure your support is strong and wide amongst coworkers. Having strength in numbers helps force management to take your campaign seriously.
It’s also important at this point to know exactly who you’re targeting with your campaign. This could be your direct manager, your CEO, or board members.
4. Communicating with management
Campaign organizers will draft a letter to management that outlines the demands of the campaign. Group members have an opportunity to view and discuss it. During this phase, it’s helpful to plan for potential responses from management.
Frank anonymously sends your approved letter to the management target(s) you’ve identified. We transmit this without names of any supporters or organizers so no one employee is identified and targeted as a leader of the campaign.
In this letter, you’ll outline to management when you expect a response by and what your group expects to happen within that timeline. Any emailed responses to the demand letter are automatically shared with the group. You can often expect management to try to respond off of Frank — which you can notate in Frank for discussion.
5. Response received from management
Once management sends their response to your group, you can vote on the next steps. This can also be triggered by a lack of a response from management within an amount of time.
If your group is dissatisfied with management’s response, you may wish to take collective action to escalate your campaign. Actions like walkouts, work stoppages or slow downs, sick-outs, social media campaigns, and press releases can put pressure on management to take your demands seriously. These actions, however, are strongest when you have the majority of your group participating and they’re also risky by nature, so it’s important to make sure your group members are united.
If you’re satisfied with management’s response, congratulations on having your voice heard. Remember to stay engaged with your group to hold your employer accountable on making the changes you want to see. And you can get started building solidarity on your next campaign.
