The past decade has seen politics ramp up in every facet of our lives — and the workplace is no exception.
Between the contentious elections of 2016 and 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic, the spread of legislation that restricts LGBTQ+ medical options, and the war in the Middle East — to name just a few recent hot-button cultural issues — businesses have dealt with pressure to make statements and decisions, as well as worker unrest, walkouts and more.
While the culture wars have hardly cooled in 2024, it appears worker interest in addressing such topics in the office has. The prevailing sentiment around workplace discussions of politics is now “meh,” at least according to some surveys.
It isn’t that workers don’t care; an August poll conducted by Indeed and Harris Poll found some workers, including nearly 40% of Generation Z and millennial workers, would leave if their CEO expressed views they disagreed with. But workers are weary, a Gallup poll from the same month showed. It appears the workplace may be a welcome reprieve from the news.
For more on evolving worker sentiment toward politics at work, read on below.