“How does your job make the world a better place, dad?”

Perhaps it was the directness of the question, or the tears in his daughter’s eyes as she asked it. Either way, it stopped James in his tracks. He didn’t have a good answer.

In his defence, James had been doing far more than most of us. He’d enjoyed a long and successful career in big tech, having started out when it was just small tech. He rose to a senior level and had a lot of pride in his company. Then a decision was taken by management to slash ESG spending, reacting to a wave of executive orders ushered in by the Trump administration. As in many of his peer organisations, values that had been deemed non-negotiable turned out to be anything but.

For James, the trigger was watching his company rapidly u-turn on ethical stances under political and capitalist pressure. He is exactly the kind of person a new initiative called Inside Track is trying to reach, and their timing feels spot on. 

Who are they and how do they operate? 
Inside Track feels like the latest evolution of employee-driven action, and they seem to be gaining traction. It’s a private network for senior leaders who are willing to call bullshit on the ethical gloss of their industry’s PR apparatus.

I can understand their appeal. I’ve always believed deeply in the power of business to change the world, and in the power of individuals to change the world of business. Leading a team of audacious Accenture employees to create a “corporate social enterprise” earned me the label “social intrapreneur” before I’d ever heard of the term. Now there’s a growing movement, including powerful employee networks like the Aspen First Movers and The League of Intrapreneurs, who are organising Global Intrapreneur Week on 9–13 November.

The picture keeps shifting. In 2018, so-called employee activism gained a lot of traction and excitement as small numbers of employees seemed able to influence the strategy of their companies from the bottom up. For example, what started as a brave open letter by Microsoft employees to their CEO gained over 4,000 signatures of support and helped overturn their policy on using Microsoft platforms to separate children from their immigrant parents at the US border. Not in our name, they said, and the leaders listened. 

But with the advent of AI, the balance of power is shifting dramatically. Tails that once seemed able to wag even the largest dogs are less likely to try if they’re at risk of the corporate crop. Even prized high performers are fearful of losing their well-paid jobs, especially if they believe it could be the last meaningful employment of their career. 

That’s where Inside Track offers an arguably less risky and more nuanced approach for willing employees like James and his peers in a number of industries. Unlike traditional employee activism, they’re not seeking to name and shame individual companies. Instead, their goal is to influence and inform policymakers and investors. They do so by raising awareness of the ethical issues and corporate hypocrisy that are on the minds and consciences of senior leaders in specific sectors. The power lies partly in aggregation: concerns that might feel isolated or risky when voiced by one employee begin to look like an industry-wide problem when expressed collectively and anonymously. Rather than rely on individual whistleblowers, Inside Track acts more like an ethical “VAR”, spotting and calling out questionable behaviour from the sidelines. 

Their methods of recruiting and protecting sources are deliberately discreet. James is not his real name, and Inside Track goes to considerable lengths to preserve the anonymity of those who speak to them. 

I’ve been out of the corporate world for more than a decade, so I no longer have the kind of insider perspective Inside Track is looking for. But I’ve been happy to publicly support this work, because the movement seems to have gained real momentum in the industries it has focused on to date. That has included direct engagement from investors and industry leaders, as well as broader public scrutiny of issues that might otherwise have remained internal. 

For example, they published a memo from senior professionals working within some of the UK’s biggest food retailers, producers and manufacturers, highlighting “an interconnected set of crises” threatening the food industry. It gained significant media attention in the likes of Forbes and the Financial Times. They also called out a “vacuum of responsible leadership” in the UK advertising industry, claiming it was under the influence of tech giants seeking to align with US government policy and reversing momentum on issues such as diversity, equity and inclusion and climate change. 

It echoes a wider pattern. A 2022 Journal of Accounting Research study found that when US firms became newly exposed to the SEC’s whistleblower provisions, the probability of accounting fraud fell by 7% and audit fees dropped by 4%. Speaking up doesn’t just make headlines; it changes behaviour.