Dive Brief:
- Incivility in the workplace rose 27% from the spring to summer months, Society for Human Resource Management researchers found in a survey of 1,620 U.S. workers conducted from late August through early September.
- Nearly half of workers attributed the incivility encountered to political viewpoint differences, and many blamed leadership. Nearly 7 in 10 said their managers could have done more to address incivility, and 65% said business goals take precedence over employee well-being, according to results released Monday to HR Dive.
- “To truly counteract incivility, workplaces must foster cultures that prioritize inclusion and diversity,” Alex Alonso, chief data and insights officer at SHRM, said in a statement. “Encouraging respectful dialogue and focusing on empathy across differences is crucial, especially as external pressures like the upcoming election intensify.”
Dive Insight:
Employers that have been paying attention to worker views on politics in the workplace this year may be confused by the charge that leadership isn’t doing enough to counter incivility. After all, workers have expressed little interest in getting into political talk at work, with 14% of those responding to a Monster report from July saying they’d rather get a cavity filled.
Leaders have likely picked up on this aversion, along with the distaste for the airing of their own political views. Nearly 40% of millennial and Generation Z workers said they’d leave a job if their CEO expressed different political views, according to an Indeed and Harris Poll survey from August. This may have led to leaders avoiding politics entirely.
But while most employees tend not to want to discuss it — or to hear their leadership’s personal political views — they do seem to want guardrails in place for when encounters become fraught. More than half of responding workers reported to SHRM that leaders ignored uncivil behavior in the workplace.
Workers are looking to business to be a stabilizing force, a July report from communications firm Weber Shandwick suggested. The firm found workers wanted employers to maintain political neutrality in the workplace but speak out for broader ideals — against political violence and for democratic values, for example.
Attorneys have pointed out repeatedly that it’s unrealistic to expect no political talk in the workplace, but employers can be prepared for the tension and incivility that accompanies such talk. In February, an attorney advised that employers apply policies consistently across different ideologies, encourage respectful dialogue and train managers on how to identify and address heated discussions. He also suggested designating an HR or legal team member who can provide managers with support.
In 2022, ahead of the midterm elections, SHRM’s Alonso also spoke to HR Dive about handling political talk at work. He advised using a “me, we, work” model to reframe the discussion in terms of workplace productivity.