Good morning, CFOs. The strategy used by Starbucks, Delta and others to leverage in-house talent; San Francisco lawsuit piles more pressure on food companies; plus, Ford’s electric-vehicle sales sink after key tax credit ends.

Executives are testing a new strategy to raise brand awareness and showcase their company: co-opting workers as their own social-media influencers.

There is a rich tradition of employees posting about work life. But it is often to spoof the grind of customer service or corporate culture, and many staffers do it without explicit approval or revealing where they work, Allison Pohle reports. Now, instead of discouraging the practice, companies from Starbucks to Delta Air Lines are leaning into it.

Why does this make sense? The strategy lets employers showcase their workplaces as happy ones and get some grassroots-like marketing out of their often young, digital-native staffers. For employees, it is a chance to channel their budding content-creation skills into greater visibility and access to perks, such as work trips and professional-development training.

Here’s what some companies are doing:

• Delta handpicked 15 front-line employees, including pilots, flight attendants and customer-service agents, and brought them to the company’s Atlanta headquarters for orientation. There, it went over the difference between a fleeting interaction on a plane and social-media videos that live forever on the internet, said Tim Mapes, Delta’s chief communications officer.
• Restaurant chain Portillo’s chose 15 staffers this year for its Maxwell Street Mavens creator program—named for a popular menu item, the Maxwell Street Polish sausage—based on the content they posted to LinkedIn and internal channels.
• Starbucks selected 53 baristas for the company’s Green Apron Creators initiative, which encourages rank-and-file employees to post on-the-job videos.

✏️ CFOs, are you employing any of these strategies to leverage your internal talent? We’d love to hear more, so hit Reply to this newsletter or email walden.siew@wsj.com to share those details, and we may feature those examples.

📆 Earnings

• Dollar Tree
• Five Below
• Salesforce 

📈 Economic Indicators

ADP releases its National Employment Report for November.

The Institute for Supply Management releases its Services PMI for November.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports export and import price data for September.

Food-company stocks sagged Tuesday as the San Francisco city attorney filed a lawsuit against some of the nation’s biggest food manufacturers, accusing them of knowingly making and marketing harmful foods.

Here are the key details: The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, alleges that 11 leading food makers, from Kraft Heinz to General Mills, violated California’s unfair competition law and public nuisance statute by engaging in “unfair and deceptive acts.” It piles more pressure on food companies. Under the banner of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has blamed ultraprocessed foods for fueling America’s obesity epidemic and contributing to widespread health problems.

📰 Other headlines

• Nike Shakes Up Leadership Team as Turnaround Plan Continues
• Amazon’s Custom Chips Pose Another Threat to Nvidia
• Amazon Releases AI Agents It Says Can Work for Days at a Time
• Exclusive: This AI Startup Wants to Remake the $800 Billion Chip Industry
• Waymo’s Self-Driving Cars Are Suddenly Behaving Like New York Cabbies
• HSBC Names Chairman After Yearlong Search
• Top Economics Group Bans Larry Summers for Life
• Retailers Are Snatching Up Real Estate Again

📈 Earnings wrapup

• American Eagle Boosts Guidance on Strong Start to Holiday Season
• CrowdStrike Narrows Outlook, Logs Higher Sales
• GitLab Swings to Loss Despite Sales Gain
• Volvo Car’s Sales Fall as Challenging Industry Conditions Continue
• Hugo Boss Shares Fall After Brand Realignment Triggers Sales Drop Warning

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PCAOB Board Member Christina Ho announced her resignation from the board of the auditing watchdog on Tuesday. Ho, a frequent dissenter on the board, has voted against more potential rules than anyone in the two-decade history of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which regulates the auditing of U.S. public companies. Ho’s term already ended in October, but she had been staying on in the role and was first appointed to the PCAOB in 2021. The PCAOB is a nonprofit created by Congress in 2002 to boost financial oversight in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom accounting scandals.

Champion Homes, the Troy, Mich.-based home-building company, named Dave McKinstray as its new chief financial officer. McKinstray will assume the role on Jan. 12, the company said. He will succeed Laurie Hough, who is retiring. McKinstray most recently served as CFO of the cereal maker WK Kellogg, where he oversaw the finances of the company amid its spinoff from Kellogg in 2023 and its acquisition by Ferrero this summer. He served in executive roles at Kellogg prior to the spinoff. Hough, who has been with Champion Homes for more than two decades, will remain at the company through May to assist with the leadership transition.

—Elias Schisgall contributed to today’s Ledger.

The Wall Street Journal's CFO Journal offers corporate leaders and professionals CFO analysis, advice and commentary to make informed decisions. We cover topics including corporate tax, accounting, regulation, capital markets, management and strategy.

Follow us on X @WSJCFO. The WSJ CFO Journal Team comprises reporters Kristin Broughton, Mark Maurer and Jennifer Williams, and Bureau Chief Walden Siew.

You can reach us by replying to any newsletter, or email Walden at walden.siew@wsj.com.