Millennials are flexing their power in the workplace. From women’s rights to demands for tougher action on climate change, younger staff are forcing the pace.

Last week the boss of KPMG stepped down amid protests from staff about his behaviour during an online meeting.

The accountancy firm’s UK chair, Bill Michael, who has headed the company since 2017, told staff to “stop moaning” during a virtual meeting about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. He also called unconscious bias, which many businesses have attempted to confront through changes to their training and recruitment practices, “complete and utter crap”.

Michael apologised for his comments, but KPMG employed the City law firm Linklaters to conduct an independent inquiry. Before it could report, the 52-year-old Australian quit the business.

There are plenty of bosses who consider their younger staff to be snowflakes, or somehow weak-willed when they talk about their wellbeing or mental health issues.

Michael said at another point in his presentation that too many staff saw themselves as victims, which he said wasn’t true unless they were sick. “Take control of your life and don’t sit there and moan about it,” he urged.

In recent years KPMG has signed up to become a living wage business, which means it not only pays its staff a higher level than the minimum wage, but also forces its suppliers and contractors to pay a living wage.

It regularly appears in lists of the best firms to work for, and boasts about its flexible working schemes. So it is possible that Michael was being held to a higher standard than many other bosses.

However, that is the modern corporate world, and it is as it should be.

Boardrooms are becoming aware of how their staff feel, and taking notice. They are also addressing the need to go further and think about the communities they operate in, and about a word that fell out of favour 15 years ago but is making a comeback – stakeholders.

Even from a cynical, profit-driven stance, happier employees tend to be more creative and work harder.

Some of the biggest US firms have struggled to make the transition. Google has regularly faced protests from its staff about boardroom policies that are considered antithetical to the purpose and vision of the firm.

In 2019 staff staged an unprecedented series of walkouts from offices across the world in protest at the company’s treatment of women.

Employees said that sexual misconduct allegations were being mishandled; they also wanted a directive that forced staff to accept the verdict of an internal arbitration system to be scrapped.

Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, said staff had the right to take the action. However, his sympathy didn’t stop hundreds of employees at the internet giant’s Silicon Valley HQ from becoming so fed up that last month they formed a union – the Alphabet Workers Union – which also represents other companies owned by Google’s parent group.

The B Corp movement, a trust that assesses a company’s intentions and how good it is at matching the rhetoric with deeds, draws most of its membership on both sides of the Atlantic from smaller businesses.

These are mainly start-ups that claim to have a purpose beyond making a profit, whether it be to reverse climate change or to alleviate poverty in their local community. They are not charities, but the ultimate aim for many is to sell out to the employees, following a similar model to the John Lewis Partnership.

French yoghurt maker Danone and the Guardian’s owner, GMG are among the companies to sign up. Unilever is following the same theme, testing out a four-day week as a way to support employees. These are firms that embrace shifting with the times. KPMG has shown it also wants to stay on course.

Whatever Tesla calls it, buying bitcoins is still speculation

It was a big week, on the face of it, for bitcoinand its battalion of enthusiasts who say cryptocurrencies will soon become mainstream. Not only did Tesla announce that it had spent $1.5bn on bitcoins, but Bank of New York Mellon, the US’s oldest bank – which has been strictly mainstream for a couple of centuries – said it had created a “digital assets” unit. And Mastercard said it would be supporting “select cryptocurrencies” on its network later this year.

Naturally, the price of bitcoins soared – the $50,000 mark is in sight, versus $10,000 a year ago.

These developments feel vaguely significant – but not to the degree the cryptocurrency crew would like to think. BNY Mellon and Mastercard were merely saying, in effect, that cryptocurrencies can now be slotted into existing financial architecture, so if customers really want to adopt them, they will make it happen – presumably for the normal fee.

That doesn’t tell us anything about the level of take-up. Tesla also said it would accept payment in bitcoins – and others will probably follow. But let’s wait to see whether there is real demand for transacting in bitcoins. Their main use to date seems to be as a unit of speculation.

Indeed, speculation seemed to be motive behind Tesla’s purchase – it sees holding bitcoins as a way to “further diversify and maximise returns on our cash”. If that type of thinking were to catch on among large companies, then, yes, that would a big development. It seems unlikely, however.

A financial asset that can rise and fall in value by 10% in a day is of no use to corporate treasury departments, which generally seek dullness and steadiness.

Tesla clearly craves excitement, but 99.9% of companies don’t. Note the reply of Dara Khosrowshahi, chief executive of Uber, when asked whether his firm would be bagging a few bitcoins. It was a firm no: “We’re going to keep our cash safe. We’re not in the speculation business.” Quite.

Shell’s gas deal was never a good fit with its green ambitions

It is easy to forget that Royal Dutch Shell was once one of the leading voices among major oil companies in the call for climate action.

Shell emerged from the 2015 oil market crash with the promise that it would move towards renewable energy, and prepare for oil prices that were “lower for ever”. Soon after, it began spending $1bn to $2bn a year to forge a path into clean energy and electric mobility.

The green investments were small compared with its spending on fossil fuels, but large compared with most of its oil industry peers at the time. Shell’s boss, Ben van Beurden, hoped to prove the green business hypothesis by the early 2020s to “turbocharge” these ambitions.

It is already clear that Shell has not yet been fully convinced by the argument for a greener energy future. Its climate strategy, set out last week, left market analysts underwhelmed and green campaigners outraged.

It also underlined just how far behind its rivals Shell has fallen in the race to go green. The strategy was branded “grotesque” by Greenpeace, which heaped (cautious) praise on BP for setting genuinely ambitious near-term climate targets last year.

The roots of Shell’s floundering may be traced back to another development in 2015. At the time Shell paid $52bn to take over BG Group, a leader in shipping liquefied natural gas (LNG) on super-chilled tankers across the globe. The ink on the Paris climate agreement had barely dried but there were already warnings that the career-defining mega-deal would prove to be a millstone around Van Beurden’s neck.

Today, Shell’s climate efforts are undermined by plans to grow its LNG business by almost a fifth by the middle of the decade, in what may be one final effort to wring value from the deal. Until Shell can leave its fossil fuel past behind, it will struggle to turbocharge its sustainable future.