Can Politics and Civility Co-Exist in the Workplace?

Chas and Julie discuss the challenges of managing political discussions in the workplace during election season. Julie emphasizes the importance of creating a safe and respectful environment for employees to express their opinions without fear of retaliation, while Chas acknowledges that there is no clear solution and encouraged organizations to survey their employees. They also discuss the potential benefits and challenges of allowing politics in the workplace, as well as strategies for addressing controversial issues and navigating sensitive conversations.

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Transcript

Chas Fields: 0:23

Hey, yo, welcome to the people purpose podcast, the show that explores the ins and outs, challenges and opportunities, HR people, managers and all people face at work every day. I am here with my almost matching shirt co host. Yeah,

Julie Develin: 0:39

we don't plan this although sometimes it seems like we do. My name is Julie. Hi, everybody. There's a different it's a little shirt though. Yeah, I don't have no you don't.

Chas Fields: 0:51

I have an immense cut. Let me finish. So he Julie, what's on your mind? Summer,

Julie Develin: 1:00

you know, I don't know when this episodes dropping chairs because I never know when our episodes drop, but I'm assuming it's still going to be warm. But Well, I I love summer. I just I just love the warm weather. And, you know, baseball, of course. And you know, I mean, I know we've talked about it on previous episodes, and UKG did a lot of research on the Olympics. Right? I'm looking forward to, to really getting into that, too.

Chas Fields: 1:28

So yeah, yeah. It's funny that this episode will drop early August, which will be the tail end of the Olympics. Yeah.

Julie Develin: 1:35

So I'm sure we're going to have a lot of gold medals. And we should we do a preacher we do a guessing who's

Chas Fields: 1:41

I hope metals the okay. I can't remember how many events there are, I think the US will get 37 medals. I think that's

Julie Develin: 1:54

low. I think that's a no, no, because if you think about like all the swimming events, and like there's all there's like all these different track and field events. And there's like, there's sports, like handball, there's sports, like, I don't think the US has a team and handle but I could be wrong. Anyway. I think it's gonna be more than that. But I guess we'll find out like so

Chas Fields: 2:17

you're taking me over on 37 We will retake on the next one. So what's on my mind is pretty straightforward, Julie. So after the last episode, we told you there were some new things coming. Yeah. Okay. Really excited. Summer is wrapping up one of those new things that you as a listener can now do. If you open up the app that you're listening on up at the top it says send us a text message. Julie, we can now take live feedback and questions and I say live we'll cover them in future episodes from our audience, which is really cool because we have a lot of people that say hey, I got a question. I just don't know how to submit it. Like I think about when we're at Aspire and we've got so many people who do listen to the show thank you for your listenership. Hey, I just sometimes I'm dealing with this and they forget or email or whatever, a we've simplified, it comes directly to us. Shoot us a text message, shout outs, all those fun things will happen. So beep

Julie Develin: 3:18

i wonder how can we how can we get people to do that? Like, can we ask people to answer questions and stuff via text?

Chas Fields: 3:24

We we cannot send that text today. Right.

Julie Develin: 3:28

But on the show if they're listening right now, for example, right? Yes. Text us whatever. Yeah, okay. Yep. This is This is organic. Everybody. We didn't talk about this prior to so. Okay, yeah. Let's ask the question. How many gold medals Do you think no, no, that's yes.

Unknown: 3:47

No, that's a perfect example.

Julie Develin: 3:49

No, it's not. Because by the time this episode drops, they'll will already know. That's

Chas Fields: 3:55

a that's yeah, that's a good point. So good. How about this? What are you dealing with in the workplace? what comments do you have for us? Or hey, have you thought about it this way? Let's just go from there. Or, you know, just just send us whatever, we're totally cool with it. So

Julie Develin: 4:09

actually send us a text as to what you think about today's show.

Chas Fields: 4:13

You go, there you go. So Julie, gonna change it up a little bit today. And I'm not going to say today is going to get dicey because it's not. What we are going to do is we're going to have an open and honest conversation, but before we do that, I got a business stat of the day. Okay. All right. She's the US Census Bureau. There's actually a couple stats because let's be can never do one. US Census Bureau, approximately 61.8% of employed Americans voted in the 2020 presidential election. SEC staff. A survey by Gartner in 2020 found that 36% of employees reported avoiding conversations with colleagues due to political disagreements and And 29% said these disagreements negatively impacted their productivity. Now, Julie, today we're going to talk about that thing. Because it's an election year, we know it impacts the workplace, we're going to talk about things you can think about when it comes to politics in the workplace. For we do that, what are your first thoughts on those steps?

Julie Develin: 5:22

Yeah, I mean, avoiding conversations with colleagues, I think that that's partly a stereotypical thing. You know, oftentimes, we think we know, but sometimes we have no idea about what people are thinking, but sometimes, you know, we find out oh, well, I think somebody thinks a certain way, but really, they think another way. And, again, you know, avoiding these conversations, I guess, one of the due to the political disagreements, one of the things that we have to do in this conversation is talk about the pros and cons of allowing political disagreements or political discussions, or political, you know, advertisements, etc. At work, you know, show when we show that the disagreements negatively impacted their productivity, I mean, that's not a surprise, right? If you have people who aren't getting along at work, then productivity is going to go down, because and we've talked about this before about when we talk about incivility, how people will try to avoid the offender. So that by just by the energy and the time and even the physical location of avoiding the offender, that's going to negatively impact productivity. So,

Chas Fields: 6:33

yeah, it doesn't like the the point in the productivity lens is it doesn't matter what the topic is, it just happens to be an election year, right? And this is one of those kind of Pinnacle times in history that happen every two and four years where people, you know, get to exercise their right to vote. And then you know, how does that carry over? So I want to take a couple of different approaches, if that's cool. And yeah, let's just let's just start with the question. Should politics be allowed in the office? And it's not? It's not our place to say, and I'm not going to give you my opinion, whether it should or should not. But there are a lot of pros, and there are a lot of cons with this. So the first one is, you know, it does encourage open dialogue and diverse perspectives. So if we separate, if we can separate the fact that it's politics in any other area of the business, for the most part, we want open dialogue, and we want diverse perspectives, right? So, yeah, where where it becomes really interesting in the workplace is sometimes can you keep the emotion out of it. And it doesn't matter which topic and I think that's where we really struggle just in business altogether, is that sometimes we let our emotions get in the way of progress. And that's where I think about creating a culture, right, and creating a culture that has these employee resource groups that allow you to talk about different things in a healthy way, and you walk away from those feeling refreshed. And I haven't figured out if politics can be included in that as well. Listen,

Julie Develin: 8:22

I found plenty on my my HR VP hat, right, which I it's hard for me to look at any of these situations without putting that hat on my my history and where I've been, I don't want anybody talking about politics at work from an HR, if I'm an HR VP, I'm not saying me personally, I'm saying if I'm an HR sure person, or you know, because basically what you're saying there is that you're opening up, you're opening up possibility, the possibility of of arguments, you're opening up the possibility of people, you know, not getting along, even more so than people don't already get along. I mean, I think there's something like something interesting, when we're thinking when we're thinking about this, you know, we've talked a lot about how over the pandemic, right, or since the pandemic, you know, one of the things that we missed a lot of at work is we missed a lot of that social interaction with people, not only at work, but in society, right, for the time that we were, quote, unquote, shut down, and we weren't going places and we were separate, and we were only talking to each other via zoom or whatever, right? Um, you know, we, some folks forgot how to interact, right, they forgot how to how to how to how to interact with each other in a way that is,

Unknown: 9:39

I guess, emotionally intelligent, in a way, in a way that is, yeah. And and I think that this is a continuation, somewhat a continuation of that conversation at work. Can we talk about politics? Should we talk about politics?

Julie Develin: 9:56

I think there's that's an existential question right? Should we kind of be Yeah, we can write freedom of speech, etc. However, there's whole conversations about private employers and what private employers can allow, and also state considerations, which, you know, please don't take it from us, please look at we're not lawyers. No, we're not lawyers, please look at what your your state laws are. Because there are different laws when it comes to politics and political activism in the workplace. And, you know, I think, though, this opens up, it opens up a possibility for even more strife between people, it opens up a possibility for, you know, this incivility to be taken almost to a little bit of a different level. And here's the thing, this won't go away after the political season is over. If the people are having these conversations, and you know, you have these differences of opinion, after the political season is over, you're not going to automatically say, Oh, well, it's done. So I don't think this way about someone anymore. Right. It's but I think it is about civility. And, you know, question is, if we're going to have these conversations, can we have them in a way that is not contentious? And I just don't know that. That's, again, HR, we're trying to mitigate risk, right. We're trying to mitigate risk. We're trying to mitigate risk of lawsuits, we're trying to mitigate risks of employees, and lack of productivity, trying to mitigate risk from a retention standpoint, all of it's about risk, whenever you open up the possibility of discussing any kind of topic that is controversial, that risk increases. That's

Chas Fields: 11:42

yeah, I don't I don't disagree with you on anything that you just said. However, contention sometimes in the workplace is a really good thing, because it sparks creativity and problem solving. Right? And that's, that's where I started, I go back and forth on this all the time. And it doesn't matter if it's politics, it doesn't matter what the topic is, for me, it's Can we sit down as adults as employees, have a conversation, agree to disagree? And also still get our work done? Right. And I think where we often lose sight is we, we take it to the extreme? Well, you know, you you believe this, therefore, we can't be friends, right? Like to you and I are very, very different. And we're still very, very good friends. And it's not political. It's not, you know, all of these other things that influence us in our lives. Do we disagree? Sure. I think what I struggle with it, too is, you know, with employee resource groups, where do you where do you draw the line on how you support employees through employee resource groups? Prime example? Right? I have a very, very dear friend of mine who works in DC, okay. And he obviously, you know, has a multitude of people political things going on, right. And the organization he works for, although it supports a specific cause, they actually have an employee resource group that allows you to talk about politics, right? And it doesn't matter, any side that you're on, or whether you know, and I think that that's really interesting. So I asked about it. And I said, Well, how does it go. And the reality of it is they have somehow built this structure very similar to the way that we do ERGs at UKG. And it's like, you don't come and air your grievances you share your experience, and why you believe what you believe and how it's impacted your life. And then you go back to work, right, and you build that support system. So I think there's some, some pros in that. But it's also really driven by keeping ourselves in check. If that makes sense. And I don't, I totally get the risk mitigation, right. You know, me, Hey, we got to do this. We got to do this thing, right, we got to do it. Well, we got to make sure we're efficient and productive. And if that's one more thing that can get me there, then maybe it is a good thing. So So

Julie Develin: 14:16

I yeah, I just I just don't I struggle with the good versus bad regarding this, right. i It's, it's not it's not to me, it's not good versus bad. To me. It's about the it's about looking at it through my through the HR lens and through the workplace lens. And, you know, should there be that separation, right? Yeah. And I hear you on the ERGs. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's

Chas Fields: 14:45

it provokes a better culture, right. If it's a catalyst for better culture, because, listen, if if what's the catalyst like like, like giving people a space to talk about what they want to talk about? Like, let's do it. Political politics or something else to the greater to the greater good of the organization? Right? Like, that's where I go back and forth? Like, where do you draw the line in the sand? Maybe you don't. Right. And that's, that's where I go with this. And I love that you use the term civility, civility requires respect of others opinions and beliefs.

Julie Develin: 15:21

Right? That doesn't mean you have to agree. Exactly.

Chas Fields: 15:24

So so I get it, because politics is a highly sensitive thing. You know, however, I can't limit necessarily freedom of speech. And then I have a core group of employees who are potentially really passionate about this. I think what I really struggle overall with it, is that everyone expects the company to make a statement, right? And they don't have to, and what do you mean,

Julie Develin: 15:51

they expect the company to make?

Chas Fields: 15:53

So when I when I say that I think about, you know, there's always this need for are you going to step out and make a statement on X, Y, and Z, right, as a company. And and not that it has to be political or any reason, sometimes companies may not have a true position, or, you know, from a corporate social responsibility perspective, it's good for them not to make a statement, right. And when we sit down, and we we actually think about it holistically, you don't necessarily always have to have an opinion, or need to force the company to make a statement or so on and so forth. Which is why I think it could be really beneficial if you're talking about it internally, versus being forced to say something externally

Julie Develin: 16:40

does that well, what about what about what about instead of forcing and having, you know, everything that we're talking about? Great, right? But what about organizations? Being proactive, rather than reactive? And having a plan, having a plan for, like, or even, you know, in my not in my opinion, but I think that in it would be who of organizations to be careful about what they're allowing in? Like, with political T shirts, and that kind of stuff? Like, yeah, there are a lot of lot organizations that do have policies in place that say, you know, you can't be wearing those things and whatnot. But, you know, I think that, to me, it's about being proactive, rather than reactive. And I talk about this with from an HR perspective all the time. So often in HR, we are reactive, and we are not proactive, so we deal with something when that situation arises, and then put a bandaid on it and fix it. Right. But the question becomes, can we do that prior to the situation arising in the first place? Can we can we come up with a plan as as a group, right, bringing in employees, bringing in leaders come up with a plan as to how we're going to deal with conflict? If and when that conflict arises? By the way, this goes beyond political discussion. I agree. So because because you, we can talk about the political season here in the States, and for our international listeners, listeners, just so you know, everybody is aware, there are over 64 countries that are having elections this year. So this is not this is not just a US thing, right? This is something that that can really, you know, transcend many, many borders. So no matter where you're listening from, you know, making sure that you are being proactive and having conversations with employees doesn't have to be anything in depth, right, but reminding them what's acceptable, what's not acceptable in your culture, you know, in order to do this, we also have to have a culture of psychological safety. Right? I think that's, that's it starts there. So, you know, anything that we can do from a transparency perspective, to work to perpetuate that culture of psychological safety, where people can bring their full selves to work, but they can do it in a respectful way?

Chas Fields: 18:58

Yeah, absolutely. And building a structure around the if you are going to take the path of having these, you know, sensitive conversations with employees, whether it's political or beyond, you've got to have very solid ground rules. You got to respect respectfully communicate and actively listen, you know, obviously, this is an obvious one, but no hate speech, right? or personal attacks or discriminatory remarks, right. And when I look at it through my training and development lens, it's there's ways to teach people how to have effective conflict resolution. Right. And that's the thing about any any sensitive subject in the workplace, how do you support employees around that sensitive subject? How do you provide them with the resources they need around said sensitive subject and can you take that to do something good for the employee and the organization? Right, so it's really it's really hard, Julie, you know, and And with with the with the election this year and everything that's going on around the world having 64 Different elections. I mean, this is it, this is a big year for for us to kind of sit back and say, Okay, is there a way that we can support our employees a little bit differently? Do we need to approach this? Or do we just leave it alone? Right? And I don't I don't know that there's a right or wrong answer. But I would love to hear from our listeners, how are you handling this text, the show in the description text show? How are you handling this in the workplace? And take it from that perspective?

Julie Develin: 20:35

Yeah. Have you had any situations come up? Right. I mean, with everything with everything that's going on, you know, in the world with all the changes, especially in the US and the rapid advancement of how the election is going, right? I mean, this is something we can't, we can't assume that people aren't going to talk about it, the Russians, right, we can't assume they're not going to talk about it, we have to assume they are going to talk about it. And we have to assume that there's going to be differences of opinion. We setting a precedent that it's okay to disagree, but it's not okay to be disrespectful is the way that we need to go from not just with politics, with everything like that goes on in the world, right? I mean, think about you know, who's your favorite pop star, right? Let's say you don't like that favorite pop star, right? That doesn't mean you have to say something disrespectful about that person and, and put down the other person's feelings, right? You know what I mean? Like, it's, again, it's this is this is a pop culture conversation. This is a how pop culture affects work conversation. And oh, by the way, we're going to be doing an episode on that. I didn't tell you about that. But we will be. Because there's going to be some talk. It's something I'm talking about in the year coming. You know, but if you think about our world, we've talked so much about how society and work, you know, have these things have collided, our personal lives and work have collided. I think this is just another example of that, how we, we do bring more of our full selves to work than ever before. And it's the organizations that recognize that and are proactive with their mitigation techniques and the kinds of communications that they are providing to employees regarding how to deal with these things. That's where those are the organizations that are going to thrive and survive, you know, over these conversations and have less strife between employees.

Chas Fields: 22:36

Yeah, I think the cool part about it is that there is a level of transparency that you can have. But going back to the point that we've made a numerous amount of times, people have to feel safe to have that conversation, number one. Number two, there can't be any sort of retaliation. In fact, there's laws in several states, whether it's political or other, that if the organization retaliates, you know, there's, you know, a significant amount of fines and can take it even a step further to shut an organization down. But the reality of it is, I think, Julie, we can't really give an opinion on this, because we're still trying to figure it out. But I love that you said, don't assume that it's not happening. Right. Yeah, it's happening and have a plan and have a plan, you know, have a plan this, these

Julie Develin: 23:24

conversations are happening. And, you know, do we want them to happen behind closed doors, where they may be disrespectful? Or do we give employees an outlet to have these discussions? I don't know. It's, it's so much of this depends on your organization, the way the culture is. You know, I think it's also interesting to that I think that HR professionals, and really, upper level leaders at the organization need to know where your company stands politically as well, because there are a lot of companies that do have some political activism behind them. So you know, recognizing that that could also cause strife amongst employees who may not agree, I think, is another thing just to be aware, it's about awareness Chas, it's about awareness.

Chas Fields: 24:12

It's so much and obviously, there's some phenomenal technology out there that if you don't know where to start, go survey your people, right and figure out a way to support them through this. And then of course, as you come up on election time, where you're looking for coverage options, you know, in your shifts in your scheduling. I hear there's also some great technology out there. Julie, work management software and HR sentiment survey analysis software out there shameless plug for UKG. But it's it's things that we need to know and be aware of, because if if we truly want to support our employees, sometimes we have to ask some some sensitive and hard hitting questions and we want to make sure that the employee feels taken care of.

Julie Develin: 24:55

Yes, and the last thing I'll say about being proactive I would highly recommend that HR departments and managers understand the laws regarding voting, and how employees can or cannot take time off to do that, etc. Because we want to make sure that we're providing everyone the opportunity to get involved, should they choose to be involved?

Chas Fields: 25:19

Yep. Julie, would you find your purpose ended up?

Julie Develin: 25:24

Being proactive, being proactive, not reactive, and recognizing that politics is not a conversation that's ever going to go away? And it just happens to be a little bit louder at certain times of the year. So we need to make sure that we're understanding that. Yeah,

Chas Fields: 25:41

I would say ask if you don't know, right, that's what I found my purpose and ask if you don't know, because I never want to get into an organization where an employee doesn't feel supported about something that they may be passionate about. And we have to have, they need to feel me personally, we need to feel as though there's a place that we can go internally to at least be heard. And find out what those folks are passionate about. Because eventually there's going to come a time where they're going to say what are you going to do for me about this? Every year it happens, we know it in the world of HR, that always happens. So with that, hey, use that text message link in the description shoot us a text tell us what's going on tell me and Julie how we can improve whatever it is that's on your mind. We would love to bring this as a part of a segment into our show. Make sure you comment, like subscribe, share with your network. We appreciate it helps us tremendously. And with that, Julie go visit ukg.com Thanks for laughs Lily Thanks,

Julie Develin: 26:46

bye