Polarizing political dialogue in the workplace has HR leaders navigating a ‘tricky balance’
Political conversations and ensuing disagreements among polarized staff are far more common in workplaces today than in the past and expected to heighten leading up to the U.S presidential election this November.
It’s a thorny issue for HR leaders as they try to maintain civility, ensure nothing rises to discrimination or harassment levels and keep staff engaged and productive at their jobs. But they’re also trying to cultivate a culture that encourages open dialogue and being authentic at work. It’s a tricky balance.
“Workplaces are expecting that these conversations will increase over the next few months with the election upon us and with what we’re seeing across campuses” regarding the war in Gaza, said Jolen Anderson, chief people and community officer at BetterUp.
“So it’s the right time for companies to be investing in the strategies that we think will help prepare leaders and managers on how to navigate these issues,” said Anderson.
Over half of workers say they’ve talked politics with colleagues in the past year, a recent survey from Glassdoor found. But at the same time, 61% of workers said they think sharing their opinions on a political issue with coworkers could harm their job and professional relationships, up from 50% in 2023, according to a survey from HiBob.
“If it becomes an insulting conversation, if it becomes a conversation that’s discriminatory or harassing or you don’t feel like you can be in a safe space with that person, that’s where it rises to the level of not being OK,” said Kelly Mendez-Scheib, chief people officer at Crunchbase.
Ultimately employers should be revisiting policies and making sure employees are aware of them — and policies will differ depending on the size and culture of the organization. “Not one company is the same. It’s tough to brush it with a very specific broad stroke kind of approach,” said Amy Mosher, chief people officer at isolved, an HR payroll software company.
In Mosher’s experience working with companies with a smaller employee-base, “they do in my opinion tend to have a lot of more open dialogue about their opinions, and traditional professionalism might not always be front and center.” Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but can’t be applied at every workplace, she said.
However, policies trying to outright ban political speech won’t be effective across the board. Instead employers will need to outline guidance for having open dialogues and constructive disagreements while clearly spelling out what would rise to an unacceptable level. And, crucially, the rules need to be enforced equally.
“With a high performing employee who is violating your political speech policy, you have to be willing to follow through with the consequences, which could be termination,” said Kathryn Ostermeier, assistant professor of management at Bryant University. “And if they are the top salesman then that could be detrimental to the firm, but you can’t let the performance of the employee dictate how you treat them,” she said.
While unclear and inconsistent rules are one key issue, managers are another, as many aren’t adequately trained on handling these inappropriate conversations and disputes or stopping them from happening, isolved’s Mosher said, adding they’ll need to learn how to do so, and focus on active listening and expressing empathy when it comes to political disagreements.
Still, workplaces leaders appear to be willing to allow this to be sorted out by staffers not always trained or equipped to do so.
Conflict resolution is a responsibility falling heavily on middle managers — with 56% reporting they are fully responsible for managing and resolving team conflicts —whether or not they feel prepared to do so, a Gartner survey of over 3,000 managers from around the world taken last year found.
And leaders are very much responsible for modeling how to have appropriate conversations about political topics with staff. They need to “understand how to navigate some of these conversations and create spaces where people can understand how to express conflicting points of view in a respectful way,” said BetterUp’s Anderson.