When Values Collide: Navigating politics in the workplace

Jessieca Hollister-Graham: Reinforcing values like teamwork and kindness can forestall problems.

Brandon Welch: It's OK to share views as long as it's done with respect.

Marlene Chism: Leaders need to lead with their own behavior.

• 
• 
• 
• 

WORKPLACE GUIDANCE

Permission to regulate discussion
Management services company Automatic Data Processing Inc. notes on its website that the First Amendment forbids government actions against private citizens. “The First Amendment doesn’t protect private-sector employees from their employer’s ability to regulate political discussions in the workplace,” it says.

Rules for public agencies may differ. For instance, the Revised Statutes of Missouri prohibit state employees from engaging in political activity while on duty, while in uniform or while wearing official insignia.

Freedom to discuss working conditions
According to the website of the National Labor Relations Board, under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, employees have to talk about working conditions, including unionization, during working time if they are permitted to talk about other nonwork subjects.

Political posters and pins
Reasonable limits may be placed on display of political materials in workspaces, according to ADP. “At a minimum, indicate that any material that violates the company’s nondiscrimination and anti-harassment policy or dress code is prohibited,” the ADP website states. However, materials that are connected to work-related issues, such as a candidate’s position on minimum wage or paid sick leave, may be protected under Section 7.

Time off to vote
Missouri law allows employees to take up to three hours off of work to vote – without loss of pay – while polls are open on Election Day. The Revised Statutes of Missouri note that employers may specify which three hours an employee may take. Employers violating this section shall be deemed guilty of a class four election offense, the statutes state.

Should we be talking about politics in the workplace?

Whatever one’s opinion on the practice, a February study by Gallup Inc. says 54% of on-site U.S. employees are doing it anyway.

Some workplaces forbid the practice, and that’s within the rights of private employers, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. SHRM notes First Amendment guarantees, which protect free speech from governmental intrusion, don’t apply to political discourse within the private workplace – provided rules don’t infringe on the right of employees to discuss terms and conditions of their own employment, as guaranteed by Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act.

Jeffrey Foster, an associate professor at Missouri State University who specializes in organizational psychology, said talking politics at the office is generally a bad idea.

“More often than not, talking about politics in the workplace is going to result in more harm than good,” he said. “People have such impassioned views about it, and they have a hard time understanding other people’s views.”

But it’s undeniable, Foster said – politics are creeping into more and more parts of everyday life, making for a thorny path for employers to navigate.

“It’s a complex, tricky problem, and there’s probably not a best practice in terms of allowing or not allowing it,” he said.

“As terrible of an answer as it is, businesses needed to figure this out for themselves.”

Remember your values
Jessieca Hollister-Graham, director of human resources at Digital Monitoring Products Inc., with some 400 workers in 28 states, said her company began talking with its leadership team about political discourse in the workplace back in May.

“What we ask is that any sort of discussion takes place with our values in mind,” she said.

Those values are always at the forefront at DMP, she said, and they include principles like teamwork, kindness, consideration and the sincere belief that others have good intentions.

But Hollister-Graham said political discourse doesn’t really serve the needs of the workplace.

“People are going to have down times, and they may be having those conversations, but work time is to be focused on work,” she said.

The important thing, Hollister-Graham said, is to have conversations about company values far in advance of when issues like election-year politics arise.

“You have to get ahead of it,” she said. “It’s worse when you let it happen and you have to get on someone for wearing a Trump shirt or a Harris shirt. We want to make sure all of our employees feel heard, supported and comfortable coming to work, and that’s why we keep those discussions out of the workplace.”

Hurt feelings are possible from political discourse, according to Gallup, which found 13% of on-site employees felt uncomfortable because of political discussions among their co-workers, and 3% felt they were treated unfairly because of their own political views. An additional 12% said they grew closer to a co-worker because of shared political views – but perhaps at a steep corporate cost.

Practicality as a guide
Brandon Welch, president and chief of strategy at marketing and communications firm Frank & Maven, said in his company of 12-15 people, it would not be practical to ask that employees completely disengage from politics.

Welch said people’s political views are formed through their lived experiences and observations.

“Politics come from deep meaning – our most authentic life experiences,” he said. “As leaders, if we’re saying leave your most meaningful things out of the workplace, that’s out of alignment with the bond and respect we want out of our teams.”

Welch offered a favorite quote by former President Ronald Reagan: “Peace is not the absence of conflict but the ability to cope with conflict by peaceful means.”

Welch said leaders need to model respect.

“Are you shining a light on your people, or are you casting darkness?” he said. “You can choose the light side of that conviction – and that doesn’t mean we’re seeking out debate matches over lunchtime.”

Within the four walls of Frank & Maven, Welch said, people listen.

“We often say the team members that are most successful in our company have two irreplaceable ingredients: empathy and curiosity,” he said. “As leaders, we foster that it’s OK to share our views as long as it’s done respectfully.”

What works at Frank & Maven may not work at a larger organization, Welch said.

Like Hollister-Graham, though, he noted that company values are there to save the day.

“If you review what your company’s actually supposed to be doing, your mission and the responsibility you have assigned yourself for the world, most of the time you’ll find politics don’t fit, unless you’re a tremendously cause-driven organization,” Welch said.

Welch said he has had many team members who hold divergent views and beliefs.

“I think I can say it’s never happened that we’ve lost a team member because of that divergence,” he said.

“It’s never for exclusion, judgment or pressure.”

Exercising self-control
There is an 19th-century idiom that says politics makes strange bedfellows.

Today, in the heat of national politics, some people would be loath to share any room – including the office breakroom – with someone from another political party.

Marlene Chism, CEO of Marlene Chism Consulting, deals a lot with workplace conflict.

“Conflict itself is not the problem; mismanagement is the problem,” she said. “We mismanage conversations during political election years.”

Chism said it’s not disagreement that ruins relationships. Disrespect does.

“The issue is that when we disagree, we name-call – we label,” she said. “The real problem at the root of it is we don’t have self-control. We’re not living by our values.”

Workplace leaders can put up certain guardrails, Chism said, and the main one is for leaders to lead with their behavior.

“Manage yourself,” she said. “Get crystal clear on your personal values so you can live by them and show up in a certain way.”

Chism agreed with Welch and Hollister-Graham that a company’s values, considered in advance, can serve as a lodestar for leadership.

But she said personal values should also guide leaders’ interactions.

“You cannot keep people from talking about politics – they’re going to,” she said. “What hurts us is when conflict becomes discriminatory and lacks inclusivity.”

Good leaders model respect, Chism said.

“It’s wrong to disrespect other people’s opinions, whether informed or not,” she said. “They have a right to their uninformed opinion. People died for that right.”

But they also model critical thinking, she said.

“Critical thinking is knowing how to separate facts from emotion,” she said. “It’s becoming more curious and less certain – it’s saying, ‘Walk me through how you came to that conclusion.’”

Chism said we’re unlikely to change each other’s opinions.

“I’ve never seen someone call a person an idiot, a sheep, a lost soul, and that other person say, ‘Oh, my gosh, thank you for pointing that out,’” she said. “If we’re really wanting change, it’s not going to happen that way.”

If a company truly embraces values like respect and inclusion, it’s easier to rein in discourse that goes against those principles.

“If values are only brought up once a year or posted on the website or walls, they’re not embodied,” she said. “They’re where you start as an organization. We should be revisiting them all the time.”