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Amid polarization, some employers are trying to ban or curb political discourse on the clock. Others let it fly.
In mid-April, dozens of Google employees were fired after staging a sit-in-style protest at the company’s offices in California, demanding an end to Google’s contracts with the Israeli government. Earlier that month, National Public Radio (NPR) suspended senior editor Uri Berliner after he published an essay accusing the news outlet of political bias. (Berliner later resigned.) The New York Times has launched an investigation into its own staff after leaks related to their coverage of the conflict in Gaza.
Similar tensions are simmering in workplaces around the world, dividing workers and putting pressure on companies to act.
“Politics is increasingly something that is no longer confined to the political arena alone,” said Edoardo Teso, associate professor of managerial economics and decision sciences at Northwestern University, US, adding that personal opinions can “overflow” into the workplace.
As elections take place in dozens of countries this year – including in the UK, US, India, Pakistan and Belgium – political discussion may well arise in workplaces around the world, leaving business leaders to decide how this is dealt with, and what circumstances cross the line.
‘In the wrong place at the wrong time’
In 2020, leaders at global software company Intuit began looking for ways to help employees speak constructively about political issues. They noted an increase in politically charged discussions as Covid-19 began, and workers disagreed over health care guidelines and vaccinations. Following the murder of George Floyd, workers spoke warmly about race relations.
Intuit subsequently issued protective guidelines for how employees can talk about divisive topics on company channels. “We want you to focus on how you feel and how things affect you as a person, and less on using our internal channels as a platform for your political views,” said the chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer Intuit’s Humera Shahid tells the BBC about the company’s approach.
There are moderators, usually HR or people who lead employee resource groups, who monitor the company’s messaging channels to flag “potentially harmful or exclusionary language”, according to company policy. Posters are asked to take down potentially sensitive content. “We find 99.9% of the time, the intent is very good,” Shahid said. “They don’t recognize that they could be causing harm to another employee.”
Some employers completely prohibit political discussions at work. One of them is the technology company 37Signals, which owns the project management platform Basecamp. In 2021, CEO Jason Fried asked company employees to refrain from political talk in company communication channels. As a result, about a third of Basecamp’s employees quit.
“It caused people a lot of pain,” Fried said. “I felt bad about that. We anticipated that there would probably be some internal and external backlash, but not so much. I think it destabilized the company for a short period of time.”
Fried says he made the decision because many employees were tired of being drawn into political discussions on the clock. “Some people were like, ‘look, I have my opinion, my colleagues have theirs, but I don’t want to argue and discuss world events at work’.” Those are the ones that stayed following Fried’s announcement.
The policy has not changed, and Fried stands by his decision three years ago. “It was the right decision at the time. That would be the right decision now,” he said. “It was a more difficult decision then, just considering the climate. It was probably one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. We are much more focused now. There are no conversations that are far off topic, and we are here to do what we do, which is construction project management software. We don’t stop for [politics].”
The company added its new policy not only to the employee handbook, but also to its open positions. “We respect everyone’s right to participate in political expression and activism, but avoid having political arguments on our internal communication systems at work. Signals 37 as a company does not weigh in on politics publicly, outside of topics directly related to our business.”
Since then, “we haven’t had one situation where we’ve had to say something to anyone internally”, says Fried. “The people who were very opposed to [the policy] leave early in the end, and those who stick around agree wholeheartedly with the point of view. It’s been pretty smooth sailing since then.”
GrowthScribe, a small marketing software company in the US, also decided to ban politics in the workplace altogether. Founder Kartik Ahuja says employee relations turned sour for his team in 2022 when two employees got into an argument about US President Joe Biden. Disagreement turned into name calling.
It was then that Ahuja shut down the discourse. “It was happening in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said, adding that such conflicts interfere with client work. Ahuja says the policy has been largely well received and there was no immediate opposition to the initial ban on talking politics. But when there was another controversy, as on 37 signs, Ahuja added rules to the employee handbook: “Harassment and prohibitive behavior are unacceptable, including … discussing political parties.”
‘It’s part of the dialogue’
In some cases, political discussions are unavoidable – even part of the everyday job. But some say these conversations also need governance.
Quorum, a company that makes software for public policy professionals, is used to this. The company – which has approximately 400 employees across the United States, Brazil, Belgium and the Republic of Moldova – gives its employees free rein to talk about political issues and difficult topics on the job.
According to Brook Carlon, Quorum’s chief people officer, because of the company’s work, political talk among employees is expected. “Most are very interested in the political environment, how policy happens, how laws are made and what candidates are doing,” he said. “It’s something that has been part of the dialogue all along.”
Workers are treading lightly in some areas, he said. For example, conversations tend to be about policy choices rather than endorsements of specific candidates. Yet disagreements flare up. One topic that reached a boiling point is the Israel-Gaza war. Among workers, support for one side of the conflict was seen as outright condemnation of the other.
The company quickly stepped in to issue rules: be aware of how someone who doesn’t agree with your opinion might receive your statements; link to a document with their opinion so that the channels are not blocked; and if you are unsure about your language, HR can review it.
Some employees are more likely to use Quorum’s open forum. “Our employees in the US are much happier to participate in this dialogue and have these conversations than our team members in Moldova or Brazil,” Carlon said.
Wider implications
Beyond the way political discussions can complicate employee relationships, some researchers have also found that alignment—or misalignment—among employees and leadership can even affect employment decisions.
Scholars studying the relationship between employment and politics in Brazilian workplaces showed that business owners are more likely to hire people who share their political affiliations. The researchers found that workers who share a political affiliation with an employer are 48% to 72% more likely to be hired than those who are not.
They have not decided exactly why employers discriminate in favor of their fellow party members, although Teso from Northwestern University – one of the authors of the working paper – suspects that some employers think there is a workplace where workers sharing similar political beliefs are likely to be productive. one. “This is probably the reason why many companies forbid talking about politics at work, because they think it could lead to conflict.”
Although Teso expects to see some favoritism along party lines, he has been surprised at how influential politics can be in hiring. Political alignment appears to be a stronger determinant of employment decisions than race or gender, he said. “The size is something [we] didn’t expect to find.”
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