Your Company Is Already Political
Everything that your employees face and struggle with within their daily lives is going to be political, in some way, because “political” just means “having to do with power”. From choosing their health insurance provider during their onboarding or understanding the HR policies someone is subjected to, people are living under a variety of political regimes just by going to work (to say nothing of the various political regimes they are subject to outside of work). According to DEIU strategy firm Paradigm, 68% of survey respondents say employees should be able to discuss racial justice issues at work. The research is telling us, these conversations won’t stay home.
We don't get to act as though there has been a total separation of the political sphere with the sphere our employees inhabit in the workplace - it's no longer possible. To ignore it would be a mistake at best. What we need to do is talk about the difference between something that is political (almost everything) and something that has become politicized in the workplace--and how we respond to it.
Understanding the situation
Why is it then that we often find it difficult to discuss politics at work, and are surprised when our employees bring up politics at work (or that it’s difficult)? If we're being honest, I think it's because while our societies have shifted in some more socially liberal ways, our workplaces are consistently more conservative than many of our cultural ideals. Our workplaces have moved to a more socially conservative ethos, afraid that disagreement could impact productivity.
But we have to be honest with ourselves: ignoring the facts of the world because we don’t want to deal with the implications of those facts on our workforce doesn’t make much sense, anyway. And when we fail to create compassionate, skilful space for discussions of political importance at our company we are ultimately choosing a specific group of people to feel more left out: those who already are more likely to live towards society’s--and our workplace’s--margins.
Creating safe space for political conversations
Many organisations are already making efforts to be inclusive of discussions that deal directly with difficult political topics and are starting to see those efforts pay off.
A healthy workplace is a political one
A healthy workplace is one that is inclusive of all, and able to cope with bringing difficult political discussions in the workplace. A workplace that thrives on doing the right thing even when it's not popular or easy is one that will thrive, thrive, thrive. When the difficult conversations of the political climate arise, we must ask ourselves how we navigate them (not stick our head in the sand). While this doesn’t mean that organizations need to have formal stances on every issue of political importance (of course!), we are likely to see an increasing number of companies take stances that require space for their employees to process and respond.
