Political Conversations at Work: October 2024 EN:Insights Forum

For the October EN:Insights Forum, SHRM Executive Network members heard about SHRM’s new research looking at political conversations in the workplace. 

“These are the types of conversations that are about polarizing political or other types of controversial issues, or things that are often morally or ideologically charged,” said SHRM lead researcher Derrick Scheetz. “One of the reasons SHRM launched the 1 Million Civil Conversations initiative was an anticipated need for civility.”

Here are five critical insights from the research.

Research Insight 1: Nearly three-quarters of U.S. workers (71%) told researchers they have had political conversations in their workplace, with many of those conversations happening in casual settings. 

Where political conversations are taking place: 

• Break rooms/other informal settings: 83%
• Happy hours/outside events: 35%
• Scheduled meetings/formal settings: 26%
• Virtual or messaging applications (e.g., Teams, Slack): 22%

“About one-quarter of workers had political conversations in settings where you might be more likely to see work actually happening, but the big takeaway is that the vast majority of these conversations happen in settings where they may not be interfering with overall work,” Scheetz said.                        

Research Insight 2: On average, these workers report having these conversations three times per week, with 43% of respondents reporting political conversations taking place daily or weekly.

Top topics of political conversations:

• Upcoming elections: 71%
• U.S. economy: 63% 
• Specific policies (e.g., abortion, gun control): 63%
• Behavior of political figures: 61%
• Social movements/human rights: 61%
• State of U.S. society today: 60%
• World conflicts or events: 58%
• Recent or past election results: 54%

As expected, the November election was the biggest topic, Scheetz said, “but you can also see that there’s really a wide range of topics when we ask workers what they’re talking about.”

Research Insight 3: Much of the difference in whether political conversations were generally positive or frustrating and negative came down to the level of civility and psychological safety in the workplace. 

When employees rate their workplace high on civility and psychological safety during political conversations, they are:

• Nearly four times more likely to say these conversations are productive.
• More than 3.5 times more likely to say these conversations are informative.

When employees rate their workplace low on civility and psychological safety during political conversations, they are:

• Nearly 6.5 times more likely to say these conversations are frustrating.
• More than 5.5 times more likely to say these conversations are uncomfortable.
• More than five times more likely to say these conversations are pointless.

“How people view your company’s culture can really make or break their experience at the company itself,” Scheetz said. “That ultimately dictates what they can give back to the company while they’re at work.”

Research Insight 4: When workers rate their organization high on civility and psychological safety, they are more likely to say they are satisfied with their job than workers who rate their organization low on these areas.

• Workers who rate high on civility and are satisfied in their job: 72%
• Workers who rate low on civility and are satisfied in their job: 39%

“There are several social and behavioral outcomes that are better when workers rate their workplace high on civility and psychological safety during political conversations as well, and this includes a much higher degree of trust in their co-workers, managers, and supervisors,” Scheetz said.

Research Insight 5: Workers who rate their workplace highly on civility and psychological safety report wanting to stay with their organization for nearly two years longer.

Worker longevity with the organization:

• Low civility and psychological safety: 5.74 years
• High civility and psychological safety: 7.46 years

“This finding jumped out as one of the most important ones because it shows that workers really do appreciate these elements of their company’s culture, especially during political conversations, which can get pretty difficult to navigate,” Scheetz said.     

Labor and Employment Lawyer Kelly Dobbs Bunting: Practice Can Make Political Discussions Productive

Kelly Dobbs Bunting is the co-chair of Greenberg Traurig’s labor and employment practice’s workplace compliance and counseling group. Bunting has expertise in defending employers in various workplace and personnel issues, including litigation, mediation, settlement negotiations, and international matters. She is frequently sought as a workforce trainer on harassment and discrimination, HR legal compliance, good management techniques, and union awareness. She earned her J.D. from Temple University’s James E. Beasley School of Law.

Bunting advised EN members to anticipate potential friction over workplace discussions leading up to the election. She emphasized the importance of having policies in place to manage these contentious conversations and to address disruptions or harm to the organization’s reputation.

“Obviously, employees are having these conversations around sensitive topics like politics,” she said. “This is something that I’m sure we’re all experiencing in our workplaces, and I’m sure it’s on the minds of anyone working in HR.”

Here are some excerpts from Bunting’s comments during the October 2024 EN:Insights Forum.

How can HR leaders effectively approach discussions around sensitive topics like politics without escalating tensions or hurting productivity?

We know when Election Day is, we know what’s coming, so prepare for it. Think about some issues that could come up and see if there is policy that you should revise or update. Think about making your policies broader to make sure that you can use them to either discipline or to have a conversation with employees if political speech gets out of hand.

HR should be mindful of how they approach these situations, keeping a very open mind and being very neutral, and encouraging your managers to do the same. I would also consider training on those policies. If you’ve already had some incidents, you can use those to create some training and prepare yourself to head that off. One of the ways you do that is training your managers to be aware of what’s going on in their own particular areas.

Can you share some practical techniques that HR leaders can use to facilitate creating collaborative dialogue at work?                                           

This sounds a little weird, but you might want to practice, because how many of us really know how to have these conversations? It’s an impossible task to be an HR manager anymore. You can practice, you can call your managers together and talk about it with them, because managers really do set the tone, and you can workshop ideas as a group. Talk about how they see this playing out in your workplace. Should we have a town hall? Should we have mini town halls? Should we have some sort of an anonymous website where people can post?

We had one client that held a town hall after Black Lives Matter, and I was very nervous about that because people were so angry and so heartbroken. What really worked for them was using an outside moderator. That takes management and HR out of the picture, because they get screamed at enough. This was totally voluntary, and it worked amazingly well. But you have to know your workforce and how your employees are going to respond, or if they need something more structured.

You also could set up affinity groups that focus on the election with a get-out-the-vote drive or some sort of nonpartisan presentation on an issue, such as a rule before Congress that could affect the workplace. 

How important is it for HR professionals to understand how the legal issues are different from state to state, from country to country?   

HR leaders should educate themselves on all of the protections covering workplace speech, including talking to your in-house lawyers or your outside counsel. It’s not just political speech, but workplace speech in general. I’m thinking of the National Labor Relations Act, which of course will protect any kind of speech grousing about workplace terms and conditions if it’s done on a collective basis.  

There are a number of states with laws specifically protecting political speech. Some of them go back to the Civil War era, but many of them came about because of the pandemic. There are also state laws that protect off-duty conduct, such as attendance at rallies or marches, advocating on behalf of a particular candidate, political speech outside of the workplace, and posting on social media.  

What about workers and senior managers who use their private social media on behalf of the business, but also post inappropriate opinions or memes?

You should review your social media policy to see if it needs to be updated. You definitely can discipline your employees and your managers, and you can terminate employees for inappropriate content on social media. But it’s all fact-specific.  

I had a client with a manager on leave during the Black Lives Matter movement. This manager had a private Facebook page where he posted awful things about the Black Lives Matter movement. He was Facebook friends with a number of his direct reports, some of whom were Black, some of whom were white, but all of whom took offense at what this man was saying.  

They went to HR and said, “We demand something be done when he comes back from leave. We don’t want to work for him anymore. How can we be assured that we are getting a fair shake in our performance reviews, in discipline from this man if he holds these views?” HR disciplined him even though he was on leave, and even though it was a private Facebook page. Eventually, [the client] terminated him because he violated its disruption to the workplace policy.  

If you have a respectful workplace policy with a list of terminable events, put disruption of the workplace in there, even if it involves posts on a private Facebook page. Offensive posts on social media can also cause reputational harm. I’ve had clients where we’ve had customers saying, “I saw this guy’s Facebook post. He said he was a manager at your company. How can you employ these people?” That is reputational harm. You can take action.

How do you balance the right to free speech with maintaining a harmonious workplace?

Free speech is a concept in our Constitution that only applies to government employees. Many folks don’t realize that you don’t have free speech with a private employer. All that “free speech” means is that the government cannot punish you or shut you down because of what you’re saying.  

If you are moving to discipline an employee over something that has led to disruption in the workplace, be really careful not to discipline them on the content of the speech, but discipline them on the result. Such as what has occurred because of the speech, the uproar in the workplace, people not wanting to work with each other, arguments in the hall, fights in the lunchroom—you concentrate on the repercussions that the speech led to, not the content of the speech itself.

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