“What are your views on the upcoming election in the US?”
“Should Joe Biden have ended his reelection campaign?”
“Is the US ready for a female President? How about a Woman of Color as President?
Are these questions you are increasingly hearing in your workplaces? If so, you are not alone!
Politics are proliferating beyond the political arena and spilling into our interactions with co-workers. Countries, including the US, are increasingly polarized and tensions are rising on all sides of the political divide with individuals more entrenched in their perspectives than ever before.
With the polarization, political discussions pervade all aspects of our lives. A key question for organizations’ is: How do leaders reconcile bringing employees’ whole selves to work, whilst managing the passionate political disagreements when employees speak their truth?
In a survey by the law firm Littler this year, about half of the 400 C-suite executives, in-house lawyers and human resource professionals polled said they were either moderately or very concerned about managing divisive political beliefs among their workforce. And yet, employees want their organizations to take stands on political issues. According to Seramount, over 50% respondents indicated that it is very important for their company to issue a statement on a national or global political issue impacting its employees (57%), customers (54%), and/or community (53%).
SHRM found that 41% of US employees have quit jobs at some point because they felt their values were being stigmatised. And Seramount’s groundbreaking study, DEI Backlash: What Employees Really Think cites that 40% of employees have taken action against a company whose political stance did not align with theirs, and one in five have engaged in “quiet-quitting” over politics. Many decide not to join when their values are not aligned with those of the organizations. People are voting based on how a company’s values intersect with the political landscape. And this matters deeply to generations Y and Z in particular - our future leaders.
When you factor in the potential costs of workplace disruptions resulting from politically charged discourse, is the solution to silence the debates that divide?
The New York Times reported that Meta had told staff not to discuss the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe vs Wade because “discussing abortion openly at work has a heightened risk of creating a hostile work environment”. Coinbase and Basecamp tried something similar and faced a walkout. Goodyear Tire and Rubber faced a backlash after banning workers from wearing Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again hat.
Is it realistic to expect employees to leave their views and perspectives at the door when they sign in for work, particularly when they are often encouraged to bring their whole self to work? A recent Morning Consult poll revealed that just one in five Americans advocated for companies banning political discussions in the workplace - https://www.ft.com/content/0864d0cb-bab0-4571-9e25-9b6f0ca041ef
Employees are looking for organizations to take a stand on external issues. They are looking for transparency. And they want the space to be able to express their political views.
So what is the answer? The go-to response of organisations is often to simply tell employees to be respectful of everyone’s view but is this approach sufficient when people feel so strongly about issues and tensions run high?
What can organizations do?
1. Be transparent about your decisions regarding your response to external political events: whether you decide to respond or not.
2. Communicate about how the events impact your employees and support your employees. When the decision to reverse Roe v Wade was handed down by the Supreme Court of the US and the abortion decisions were delegated to the states, companies took a stand to ensure the safety of their employees and paid for them to travels out of state if abortions were banned in the state where they live.
3. This is an opportunity to reinforce organizational values in light of external political events.
4. A recent article in the Raconteur suggests organizations equip employees with the skills for holding challenging conversations. These skills include emotional regulation, empathetic listening and critical thinking.
5. Establish robust guidelines to enable productive political dialogue:
- Acknowledge that tensions are running high and that many individuals may be feeling stress related to upcoming elections. and other geo-political events.
- Encourage individuals to approach the conversations from a place of curiosity and find common ground.
- These conversations should be seen as a gateway to enhance understanding of lived experiences and how an individual’s experiences shaped their perspective rather than as a means to fundamentally change someone’s views.
With elections this year taking place in almost 70 countries, geo-politics has and will continue to be a significant global storyline of 2024 and different cultures and countries have differing responses to political discussions in the workplace. Having worked for a French company, I have witnessed first-hand that for the French, political discussions are a way to engage and to build relationships. In fact, recently while conducting interviews of French candidates, I found that they were eager to get through the interview so they could discuss US politics with me.
Managing political conversations in the workplace is about finding the right balance between open dialogue and respecting personal boundaries. Not everyone may feel comfortable discussing political topics at work. We should be attentive of our colleagues' comfort levels and be willing to shift the conversation if it causes discomfort.
Now is the time for leaders to step up and ensure that our organizations are places of respect, collaboration, and shared purpose, even in the face of differing political views.
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