Zoho CEO puts a blanket ban on intra-company groupings based on political affiliations. American Big Tech should learn a thing or two

Zoho Corp founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu took to Twitter on Friday to inform netizens about a new rule that he has implemented in his company. Vembu remarked that no employee in the organisation was allowed to protest or demand the resignation of a colleague if his/her political beliefs were divergent or not liked by the particular individual.

Speaking about the menace of growing woke ‘Cancel culture’ and how people have been fired for their political beliefs, Vembu tweeted: “We have a rule in Zoho: no employee is allowed to agitate for the termination of another employee because they dislike their political views. This is an important rule in times of cancel culture and we will not relent on this important freedom of conscience principle.”

Zoho’s pragmatic approach toward dealing with a conflict, especially in today’s charged political climate where more often than not ‘offices’ divide themselves into factions based on ideologies should be implemented by companies around the country, as well as big American tech companies.

There is no denying the fact that Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms are inherently left-biased. The employees having different political ideologies are pushed to the fringes in these companies and their voice is silenced. The Silicon Valley behemoths quite amusingly think of themselves as the judge, jury and the executioner who have the sole responsibility to uphold what is right and wrong.

While these companies swear by the notion of freedom of speech in public, the reality is starkly different when it comes to the confines of the offices. As reported by TFI, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has openly admitted on the record that conservatives fear to voice their opinion within the organisation as the left-wing employees outnumber and dominate them.

Read More: With one tweet, Zoho CEO whacks online goons targeting him and Accenture MD for attending RSS event

“We have a lot of conservative-leaning folks in the company as well, and to be honest, they don’t feel safe to express their opinions at the company,” Dorsey had said in one of the interviews.

Similarly, Vembu’s progressive decision might not be liked by the liberals of the country but one has come to accept such behaviour from them. As reported by TFI, in January last year, Vembu and Rama S Ramachandran, MD and head of communications, media and technology, Accenture India, were supposed to participate in an RSS event named Resurgent Bharath in Chennai.

https://twitter.com/kanniyaari/status/1214060857774075904

Since these two are well-known corporate bosses from the IT sector, the liberals had heartburns and were obviously outraged at the thought of them gracing an RSS event. The cancel brigade came out in its full glory and started cancelling the two entrepreneurs. However, Vembu, depicting what a calm head on the shoulder looks like, took to Twitter to respond to the childish antics of a few deranged liberals with a simple yet effective tweet.

The Zoho CEO said, “I don’t decide my views based on Twitter attacks. If you dislike which events I attend, please do what your conscience dictates and I will do what mine dictates. We earn our daily bread due to our work and we will continue to do quality work. I won’t be responding to attacks.”

The biggest threat to companies nowadays is not weak fundamentals or a shaky economy but the woke brigade which has the uncanny ability to get offended by anything and instantly issuing a diktat to cancel it. Vembu has suggested an effective antidote and one reckons that companies looking to rid themselves of the Cancel culture would implement the aforementioned rule.