Politics Comes to Work: Election-Season Polarization, Employee Wellbeing, and How Leaders Can Protect Civility Without Silencing Voice
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Abstract: Political polarization has become a persistent feature of American working life, and the approach of the November 2026 midterm elections renews the question of how leaders should respond. This article synthesizes research on political expression, affective polarization, and political spillover at work. Recent longitudinal evidence shows that political news consumed outside work shapes engagement and helping through anxiety and hope, while discussions with chosen coworkers can support emotional wellbeing. Survey data indicate that political disagreement and election-related stress are common and are linked to incivility, distraction, and avoidance of colleagues. The article reviews consequences for performance, retention, legal exposure, and individual wellbeing, then presents five evidence-based responses: conduct-focused and viewpoint-neutral expression policies, manager capability to facilitate and de-escalate, civility infrastructure, legal literacy with consistent enforcement, and support for civic participation and wellbeing. Documented organizational experiences illustrate each response. The article concludes that organizations fare best when they regulate conduct rather than belief and build durable capacity for civil disagreement.
Every two years, American workplaces run an uncontrolled experiment. In the weeks before a national election, news alerts, campaign advertising, and social media feeds intensify, and employees carry what they have read and felt into meetings, chat channels, and break rooms. On November 3, 2026, voters will choose all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 35 senators, and governors in 36 states (Fisher Phillips, 2026). The national mood heading into that vote is sour. A Pew Research Center survey fielded in late September and early October 2026 found that only 22% of Americans were satisfied with the way things were going in the country, while large majorities of both parties' supporters said it really matters which party wins control of Congress (Pew Research Center, 2026). For leaders, that combination of dissatisfaction and high stakes is a familiar warning sign. Politics does not stay outside the office door, and it rarely has.
What has changed is the intensity of the feelings involved and the quality of the evidence about what those feelings do at work. Political scientists now describe American partisanship less as a disagreement over policy and more as a form of social identity marked by dislike and distrust of the other side, a pattern called affective polarization (Iyengar et al., 2019). That animosity spills into decisions that have nothing to do with politics, including whom people are willing to trust, help, or hire (Gift & Gift, 2015; Iyengar & Westwood, 2015). It also appears to be durable. A large study conducted around the 2022 midterm elections found that partisan animosity and support for norm violations barely moved from before to after Election Day, which suggests that leaders should not expect tensions to reset when the votes are counted (Fasching et al., 2024).
At the same time, organizational research has moved beyond the simple advice to keep politics out of work. A nine-wave weekly study of 308 full-time U.S. workers during the 2024 presidential primary season found that the political news employees consumed at home shaped how they showed up at work the following week. In weeks when people consumed more content they experienced as negative, they reported more anxiety, and that anxiety was associated with lower work engagement. In weeks with more content they experienced as positive, they reported more hope, which was associated with higher engagement and more helping of coworkers (Hughes et al., 2026). Another program of research, conducted across the 2020 and 2024 elections and a non-election period, found that talking about politicized news with coworkers was often associated with better same-day emotional wellbeing, largely because employees chose sympathetic listeners and used the conversations to process difficult feelings (Kuhn et al., 2026). The picture that emerges is more nuanced than either "politics is toxic" or "bring your whole self to work." Political life affects employees through emotional pathways that leaders can understand and, to a meaningful degree, influence.
The practical stakes are considerable. In a 2024 survey of U.S. workers, 47% said differences in political viewpoints contributed to incivility at work, and workers who experienced or witnessed incivility reported taking time off as a result (SHRM, 2024). Organizations that responded to political conflict with abrupt bans have sometimes lost a substantial share of their staff, while organizations that tolerated unchecked hostility have faced complaints, attrition, and legal exposure. Employers also operate inside a legal framework that is more protective of employee expression than many managers assume, including federal labor law that can protect political speech connected to working conditions and state laws that protect off-duty political activity (Eastex, Inc. v. NLRB, 1978; Taylor, 2025).
This article synthesizes the research on political polarization at work and translates it into guidance for leaders. It begins by defining key terms and describing how common political strain is and where it concentrates. It then examines consequences for organizational performance and for individual wellbeing. The core of the article describes five evidence-based organizational responses, each illustrated by documented organizational experiences, and closes with recommendations for building long-term capacity for civil disagreement. The aim is not to remove politics from working life, which is neither possible nor desirable, but to help leaders create workplaces where people who disagree can still work well together.
The Workplace Political Polarization Landscape
Defining Political Expression, Affective Polarization, and Political Spillover
Several terms recur throughout this article, and precision helps. Political expression at work refers to any communication of political views, identities, or affiliations in a work setting, whether through conversation, internal messaging platforms, clothing and symbols, or participation in advocacy. It ranges from a brief comment about a news story to organized employee activism directed at the employer's own decisions. Research on political ideology in organizations has distinguished three faces of the phenomenon: ideology as a set of values, as a social identity, and as a formal affiliation with a party or cause (Swigart et al., 2020). Each face can surface at work in a different way, from disagreements about strategy to a sense of not belonging among colleagues who vote differently.
Affective polarization is the tendency of partisans to view supporters of the opposing party negatively and members of their own party positively, quite apart from disagreements over policy (Iyengar et al., 2019). Its workplace significance lies in its reach. In a series of studies using implicit, explicit, and behavioral measures, Iyengar and Westwood (2015) found that partisan animus was at least as strong as racial bias and that partisans discriminated against members of the other party in nonpolitical decisions. Because few social norms restrain the open expression of partisan hostility, political identity can become one of the few remaining socially acceptable grounds for treating a coworker as an outsider.
Political spillover describes the transfer of emotions and resources from political life into work. Spillover can be direct, as when employees argue about an election at work, or indirect, as when the news someone reads at breakfast leaves them anxious and less focused at their desk. The weekly study by Hughes et al. (2026) is essentially a study of indirect spillover. Diary research outside the workplace has found that daily political events reliably produce negative emotions that are linked to poorer psychological and physical wellbeing, even as they increase motivation for political action (Ford et al., 2023). For leaders, the implication is that political strain can affect employees who never mention politics at work.
Finally, workplace incivility refers to low-intensity rude or discourteous behavior with ambiguous intent to harm, such as dismissive remarks, interruptions, or exclusion (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). Political disagreement is not itself incivility, but it is one of the most common triggers for it, and incivility can spiral into more aggressive conduct when it goes unaddressed (Andersson & Pearson, 1999; Pearson et al., 2000). The distinction matters for policy design, because organizations can regulate conduct without trying to regulate belief.
Prevalence, Drivers, and Distribution
Political strain at work is common, and the available surveys suggest it rises around elections. After the 2016 presidential election, an American Psychological Association survey of employed adults found that 26% felt tense or stressed as a result of political discussions at work, up from 17% before the election. Some 54% had discussed politics at work since the election, 24% said they had avoided some coworkers because of their political views, and 15% reported difficulty getting work done (American Psychological Association [APA], 2017). During the 2022 midterm cycle, a majority of workers surveyed by SHRM reported discussing the election outcome at work, and more than one in five said they had seen anxiety and stress rise among coworkers before Election Day (SHRM, 2022). In the months before the 2024 election, 47% of workers in SHRM's civility research said political viewpoint differences contributed to incivility at work (SHRM, 2024). A 2025 survey by the HR research firm Brightmine found that 64% of employees had experienced or witnessed a political disagreement at work in the past year, and 27% said the political environment distracted them from their jobs, up from 19% a year earlier (Brightmine, 2025). These are survey-based snapshots from different organizations using different questions, and they should not be read as a single trend line. Taken together, however, they describe a consistent reality: political tension is a routine part of working life for a sizeable share of American employees.
Several drivers help explain why the strain is so persistent. The first is the broader climate of national stress. In the APA's 2024 Stress in America survey, 69% of adults described the presidential election as a significant source of stress, up from 52% in 2016, and half said that political and social tension had made them less interested in connecting with others (APA, 2024). The following year, 62% of adults named division in the country as a significant source of stress, and people stressed by division were more likely to report feeling isolated and to report physical symptoms of stress (APA, 2025). Employees bring that stress to work whether or not they discuss its source.
The second driver is the changing nature of workplace communication. Internal messaging platforms, discussion forums, and meme boards have created always-on spaces where a single comment can reach hundreds of colleagues and be read without the tone and context of a face-to-face exchange. Several of the most visible organizational controversies over political speech, including those described later in this article, began on internal platforms rather than in physical offices.
The third driver is the growing expectation, among some employees, that employers take positions on public issues, alongside an equally strong preference, among others, that employers stay out of politics entirely. A 2024 Monster poll reported by SHRM found that 68% of workers were uncomfortable discussing politics at work, yet 51% said they would consider leaving if their company openly expressed political beliefs they disagreed with (Mayer, 2024). A 2022 survey of full-time employees found that 85% preferred no politics at work and 74% feared that midterm conversations could create more workplace tension (Insight Global, 2022). Leaders therefore face competing expectations, and any public stance or internal rule will disappoint someone.
Political strain is not evenly distributed. After the 2016 election, liberal employees were more likely than moderates or conservatives to report stress from political talk at work (APA, 2017), a pattern that likely reflects which side was disappointed by the result rather than a stable trait. In a study of more than 40,000 private-equity professionals, ideological misfit with colleagues, measured through campaign contributions, was associated with departure, with the effect varying by the direction of the misfit (Bermiss & McDonald, 2018). Research in South Korea found that the costs of political conversations at work depended on employees' region and on how comfortable they were managing their political identity (Kim et al., 2022). Swing-state workers in SHRM's 2022 surveys described their mood as anxious more often before the midterms than afterward (SHRM, 2022). In practical terms, the burden of political tension tends to fall on people who perceive themselves to be in the political minority within their team, region, or industry, and on people whose identities are directly implicated in the issues being debated.
Political identity also shapes employment decisions in ways that rarely surface in formal complaints. In a field experiment, résumés that signaled membership in the locally unpopular party received fewer callbacks than politically neutral résumés (Gift & Gift, 2015). Experimental work in industrial-organizational psychology has found that perceived political similarity influences how evaluators rate job candidates (Roth et al., 2020), and large-scale administrative data from Brazil show that business owners are substantially more likely to hire and promote workers who share their politics (Colonnelli et al., 2025). The workplace, in other words, is not a politically neutral space even when no one is talking about politics.
Organizational and Individual Consequences
Organizational Performance Impacts
The most direct organizational cost of political strain is lost attention. Employees who are anxious about political events, or who are managing tense relationships with colleagues, have fewer cognitive and emotional resources available for their work. Conservation of resources theory, which holds that people experience stress when valued resources such as energy, time, and emotional stability are threatened or depleted, provides a useful lens. In the weekly study by Hughes et al. (2026), the link between negatively experienced political news and lower engagement ran through anxiety, and anxiety was also associated with employees withholding their opinions at work. An experience sampling study conducted during national election periods in South Korea found that in weeks when supervisors or coworkers initiated more political conversations, employees reported more resource depletion, which was in turn associated with less helping and more withdrawal (Kim et al., 2022). Work engagement, discretionary helping, and willingness to voice ideas are among the behaviors that matter most for team performance, and they are precisely the behaviors these studies find most sensitive to political strain.
Incivility adds a second layer of cost. SHRM's civility research estimated that workers who experienced or witnessed incivility intentionally took time off in the previous month, and the organization put the associated cost to U.S. businesses at roughly $2.17 billion per day, although that figure is an extrapolation and should be treated as an order-of-magnitude estimate rather than a precise accounting (SHRM, 2024). Earlier research established that incivility is common and associated with lower job satisfaction, greater psychological distress, and stronger thoughts of quitting (Cortina et al., 2001). Practitioner research has documented that targets of incivility often reduce effort and time at work and that some take their frustration out on customers (Porath & Pearson, 2013). Because incivility tends to spread when unchecked, political hostility in one team can shape norms well beyond it (Andersson & Pearson, 1999).
Political strain can also impair collaboration across lines of difference. A dynamic study of employees around the 2020 U.S. election found that perceived political dissimilarity with coworkers did not predict interpersonal conflict before Election Day but did predict conflict on Election Day and in the days that followed. Notably, that conflict reduced next-day engagement only when employees did not see their leaders as handling conflict collaboratively (Reinwald et al., 2022). This finding, though reported in a conference abstract rather than a full journal article, has an important implication. The consequences of political conflict for performance appear to depend substantially on how leaders respond.
A further cost is talent loss. Ideological misfit has been linked to employee departure in professional services (Bermiss & McDonald, 2018), and organizations that responded to political conflict with sweeping restrictions have, in visible cases, lost a significant share of their workforce within days. Political considerations can also distort selection and promotion decisions, reducing the quality of hiring and exposing organizations to claims of unfair treatment (Colonnelli et al., 2025; Gift & Gift, 2015; Roth et al., 2017). When talent decisions are influenced by political similarity, organizations lose access to the diversity of perspective that supports better problem solving.
Finally, political conflict creates legal and reputational exposure. Employee speech about political issues may be protected under federal labor law when it relates to employees' interests as employees (Eastex, Inc. v. NLRB, 1978), and several states protect off-duty political activity or affiliation (Taylor, 2025). Restrictions that appear to target one viewpoint can provoke public backlash, as several organizations have learned. These risks do not mean employers cannot set rules. They mean rules must be designed and enforced with care.
Individual Wellbeing and Stakeholder Impacts
For individuals, political strain is a chronic stressor rather than an occasional irritation. Daily diary research found that political events produced negative emotions that were linked to poorer psychological and physical health on the same day, and that the strategies that protected wellbeing, such as reappraisal and distraction, also reduced motivation to engage in political action (Ford et al., 2023). Employees thus face a genuine tradeoff between protecting their wellbeing and remaining engaged citizens, and work can make that tradeoff easier or harder.
The workplace effects are not uniformly negative. Hughes et al. (2026) found that political content employees experienced as positive was associated with more hope, higher engagement, and more helping, and that the hope effect appeared both from week to week and between people. Kuhn et al. (2026) found that discussing emotionally charged political news with coworkers was frequently associated with better emotional wellbeing, because employees chose trusted colleagues and used the conversations to share and process emotions. The findings challenge the assumption that the only healthy workplace is a politics-free one. They also suggest a risk. Employees who believe they are in the political minority on their team may have no safe partner for this kind of social sharing, leaving them to carry political stress alone while watching colleagues bond over shared views.
Exclusion and self-censorship are therefore important, if less visible, harms. After the 2016 election, nearly one in four employees reported avoiding coworkers because of their political views (APA, 2017). Self-censorship can feel like the safest option, but persistent withholding of opinions is associated with reduced engagement (Hughes et al., 2026) and can erode the psychological safety that teams need to surface problems and mistakes (Edmondson, 1999). Employees whose identities are directly at stake in political debates, such as those concerning immigration, reproductive rights, gender identity, or race, may experience political discussions not as abstract policy disagreements but as debates about their own legitimacy.
The effects also reach customers, communities, and other stakeholders. Customer-facing employees may encounter political hostility from the public, and retailers have faced difficult decisions about political symbols worn by staff in stores. Organizational stances on public issues can affect relationships with customers, investors, and policymakers. Employees who feel their employer has either ignored or exploited a public issue may become disengaged or vocal critics. Because these stakeholder dynamics are hard to predict, leaders benefit from deciding in advance how they will approach both internal expression and external advocacy, rather than improvising in the middle of a news cycle.
Evidence-Based Organizational Responses
The research reviewed above points toward a practical conclusion. Organizations cannot remove politics from work, and attempts to do so through sweeping bans often backfire. They can, however, reduce the harms of political strain and preserve its benefits by focusing on conduct, equipping managers, building civility, respecting the law, and supporting employees' civic and emotional lives. Table 1 summarizes five evidence-based responses.
Table 1: Evidence-based organizational responses to political polarization at work
Response | Evidence Base | Key Practices | Illustrative Examples |
Conduct-focused, viewpoint-neutral expression policies | Incivility research; political ideology review; studies of political discussion and wellbeing (Andersson & Pearson, 1999; Kuhn et al., 2026; Swigart et al., 2020) | Regulate behavior rather than topics; define platform norms; apply rules equally across viewpoints; explain the rationale | Basecamp; Coinbase; Google; Meta |
Equipping managers to facilitate and de-escalate | Election-period conflict studies; research on conversational receptiveness and intellectual humility (Kim et al., 2022; Porter & Schumann, 2018; Reinwald et al., 2022; Yeomans et al., 2020) | Train managers in collaborative conflict handling; avoid initiating political talk; redirect to shared work; follow up after flashpoints | Google; Home Depot |
Building civility infrastructure | Civility intervention studies in health care (Leiter et al., 2011, 2012; Osatuke et al., 2009) | Team-based civility programs; regular facilitated sessions; shared norms; measurement of civility over time | Veterans Health Administration |
Legal literacy and consistent enforcement | Labor law and state statutes (Eastex, Inc. v. NLRB, 1978; Taylor, 2025); recent NLRB and court decisions | Train managers on protected activity; review dress codes and policies; enforce consistently; document legitimate business reasons | Starbucks; Home Depot; Whole Foods Market |
Supporting civic participation and wellbeing | Political stress and emotion research (APA, 2025; Ford et al., 2023; Hughes et al., 2026) | Provide time to vote; acknowledge stress; promote wellbeing resources; build agency through civic engagement | Patagonia; Time to Vote coalition |
Conduct-Focused, Viewpoint-Neutral Expression Policies
The evidence suggests that the most effective expression policies regulate how people treat each other rather than what they are permitted to discuss. Incivility research shows that harm arises from disrespectful conduct and from norms that allow it to escalate (Andersson & Pearson, 1999; Pearson et al., 2000). Research on political discussion at work shows that conversations among willing participants can support wellbeing (Kuhn et al., 2026), while research on political ideology at work shows that ideology is bound up with identity and values that employees cannot simply leave at home (Swigart et al., 2020). Kuhn and colleagues have also noted that blanket bans on discussing current events may be unrealistic. A conduct-focused policy addresses the real source of harm without asking employees to pretend that major public events are not happening. A viewpoint-neutral policy, applied equally regardless of which side a comment favors, is also more defensible legally and more credible to employees.
Effective approaches:
Behavioral standards: Define prohibited conduct clearly, such as personal attacks, demeaning language about groups, pressure on colleagues to adopt political positions, and harassment, rather than banning subjects.
Channel norms: Specify where political discussion is and is not appropriate, for example by keeping customer interactions and work-specific channels focused on work while allowing voluntary discussion elsewhere.
Consent and opt-out: Make clear that no employee is obliged to participate in political conversations and that a request to change the subject must be respected.
Neutral enforcement: Apply rules identically across viewpoints and audit enforcement patterns to detect drift.
Transparent rationale: Explain why rules exist, link them to the organization's purpose and values, and consult employees before major changes.
Basecamp, a small software company, illustrates the risks of an abrupt topic ban. In April 2021, its leaders announced that societal and political discussions would no longer be permitted on the company's internal communication account, alongside other policy changes. After a contentious all-hands meeting, roughly one-third of the company's employees, about 20 people including several department heads, accepted buyouts or resigned within days (Kimball, 2021). The episode showed how quickly a sudden restriction, introduced without consultation and amid an unresolved internal dispute, can damage trust in a small organization.
Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange, took a different path in 2020 when its chief executive described the company as mission focused and said it would keep broader social and political activism out of the workplace, while offering severance to employees who disagreed. About 60 employees, roughly 5% of the workforce, accepted the exit package (McSweeney, 2020). Whatever one thinks of the policy, Coinbase made the rules explicit and offered a clear path for those who did not want to work under them, which made the consequences more predictable than in many improvised responses.
Google provides an example of an evolving, conduct-focused approach. In 2019 the company issued community guidelines that discouraged heated debates about politics and news on internal forums, prohibited statements that insult or demean colleagues, and appointed moderators, without banning political conversation outright (Axios, 2019). Meta adopted a respectful communication policy in 2019 and, after the 2022 leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion on abortion, reiterated that discussion of abortion was off-limits on its internal platform, citing concerns about a hostile work environment; many employees objected to the restriction (KTVU FOX 2, 2022). The contrast is instructive. Rules that focus on conduct and apply across topics tend to draw less resistance than rules that single out particular issues, which employees may read as a judgment about whose concerns matter.
A common pitfall is to treat a policy as a substitute for leadership. Organizations sometimes write a rule in the heat of a controversy, announce it by memo, and assume the problem has been solved. Employees then experience the policy as a gag order rather than a shared agreement, and enforcement becomes selective because managers are unsure how to apply it. Policies work best when they are developed before a crisis, explained in person, and paired with the manager capabilities described next.
Equipping Managers to Facilitate and De-escalate
Managers are the point at which policy meets daily life, and the research suggests their behavior is pivotal. In the study around the 2020 U.S. election, political conflict harmed next-day engagement only when leaders were not seen as managing conflict collaboratively (Reinwald et al., 2022). In the South Korean election studies, political conversations initiated by supervisors were among those linked to resource depletion and withdrawal (Kim et al., 2022), which suggests that managers should be cautious about starting political discussions themselves. Research on communication across disagreement points to teachable skills. Conversational receptiveness, the use of language that signals genuine willingness to engage with opposing views, such as acknowledging the other person's point and hedging one's own claims, has been found to make disagreeing counterparts view speakers more favorably and to reduce conflict escalation (Yeomans et al., 2020). Intellectual humility, the recognition that one's own views may be fallible, is associated with greater openness to opposing political perspectives (Porter & Schumann, 2018).
Effective approaches:
Restraint by default: Encourage managers not to initiate political discussions or share their own partisan views with direct reports, given their power over evaluations and assignments.
Collaborative conflict handling: Train managers to address political conflict early, privately, and with a focus on restoring working relationships rather than adjudicating who is right.
Receptive language: Teach simple conversational moves, such as acknowledging the other person's point, asking clarifying questions, and finding areas of agreement, that lower defensiveness.
Redirecting to shared work: Equip managers with respectful ways to bring meetings back to shared goals when political discussion crowds out work.
Post-event check-ins: Plan brief, nonpartisan check-ins after major political events, acknowledging that people may be feeling a range of emotions and reminding them of available support.
Google's experience around the 2024 election shows the operational side of this work. In the weeks before the vote, the company tightened moderation of political content on Memegen, its internal meme forum, and on Election Day displayed a reminder that the forum was not a place for personal political opinions, with moderators removing election-related posts; an internal document indicated that political debates accounted for most content removals (Elias, 2024). The approach relied heavily on designated moderators, illustrating that someone has to do the day-to-day work of applying norms consistently.
Home Depot's experience shows how a manager's response to a political symbol can turn into years of legal dispute. In 2020, an employee at a Minnesota store wrote "BLM" on his work apron after raising concerns about a coworker's racist conduct, and he resigned after being told he could not work until he removed it. The National Labor Relations Board ruled in 2024 that his display was protected concerted activity because it grew out of workplace complaints, but a federal appeals court vacated that ruling in 2025, citing special circumstances in a customer-facing setting during a period of local unrest (CNN, 2024; Fox, 2025). For managers, the lesson is not a simple legal rule. It is that symbols are often connected to underlying workplace concerns, and a conversation about those concerns may resolve more than an instruction to remove the symbol.
A common pitfall is to treat managers as neutral referees who can simply stop political talk. Managers have their own views and stresses, and without training they may avoid conflict until it escalates, intervene inconsistently, or inadvertently signal their own leanings. Organizations should invest in practice-based training and give managers access to HR and employee relations partners before, not after, a dispute becomes formal.
Building Civility Infrastructure
Policies and manager skills address individual incidents, but the deeper task is to build team norms that make civil disagreement routine. The strongest evidence on this point comes from structured civility interventions in health care. The Civility, Respect, and Engagement in the Workforce program, known as CREW, was developed in the U.S. Veterans Health Administration and brings work groups together regularly over several months, with trained facilitators, to discuss how they treat one another and to agree on better ways of working. An evaluation across Veterans Health Administration sites found that civility improved significantly at participating sites, with no comparable change at comparison sites (Osatuke et al., 2009). A controlled study in Canadian health care units found that units completing a six-month CREW intervention improved more than comparison units in coworker civility, supervisor incivility, respect, cynicism, job satisfaction, trust in management, and absences, with improvements in civility helping to explain the gains in attitudes (Leiter et al., 2011). A follow-up assessed whether these improvements were sustained a year later and found that the gains were largely maintained (Leiter et al., 2012). None of these studies focused specifically on political conflict, but they demonstrate that civility is a team-level capability that can be strengthened deliberately.
Effective approaches:
Team agreements: Facilitate conversations in which teams agree on how they will handle disagreement, including political disagreement, before tensions peak.
Regular practice: Hold short, recurring sessions rather than one-time trainings, because civility norms are built through repetition.
Measurement: Track civility and incivility through pulse surveys and use the data to target support where it is most needed.
Bystander skills: Teach employees simple ways to interrupt incivility, such as redirecting a conversation or checking in privately with a colleague who was targeted.
Leader modeling: Ask senior leaders to model respectful disagreement in visible forums, including acknowledging when they have changed their minds.
The Veterans Health Administration's experience with CREW is itself the most instructive organizational narrative. Facing evidence that respectful treatment varied widely across its facilities, the agency developed CREW as a nationwide organization development initiative and implemented it across multiple sites in successive waves, with local facilitators supported by central resources (Osatuke et al., 2009). Its value for leaders today lies in the model: a sustained, team-owned process that treats civility as a shared responsibility rather than a compliance requirement.
The need for this infrastructure is evident in employee perceptions. In SHRM's 2024 civility research, 68% of workers felt their managers could have done more to address incivility, and 60% said managers had ignored uncivil actions at work (SHRM, 2024). Those figures suggest that many organizations rely on managers to handle problems that teams have never been equipped to prevent.
A common pitfall is to launch a civility campaign during an election season, framed implicitly as a response to one political camp's behavior. Employees quickly detect partisanship in such efforts, which undermines them. Civility programs are most credible when they are introduced as part of ongoing team development, apply to all forms of disrespect, and are sustained well beyond any particular election.
Legal Literacy and Consistent Enforcement
Many managers assume that because the First Amendment generally restricts government rather than private employers, private employers may restrict political speech however they wish. The reality is more complex. Under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, employees have the right to engage in concerted activity for mutual aid or protection. In Eastex, Inc. v. NLRB (1978), the U.S. Supreme Court held that this protection can extend to employee advocacy through political and legislative channels when it relates to employees' interests as employees, while leaving the boundaries to be drawn case by case. Several states also protect employees' off-duty political activities or affiliations. California law prohibits employers from adopting rules that forbid employees from participating in politics or that control their political activities or affiliations; Connecticut protects the exercise of certain constitutional rights, including speech, from discipline when the activity does not substantially interfere with job performance or working relationships; and New York and Colorado protect certain lawful off-duty activities (Taylor, 2025). Voting leave adds another layer: no federal law requires private employers to give time off to vote, but 28 states and the District of Columbia require some form of voting leave, with rules that vary on pay, notice, and posting (Fisher Phillips, 2026). This summary is general information rather than legal advice, and employers should consult counsel about their specific jurisdictions.
Effective approaches:
Policy review: Review expression, dress code, and social media policies with counsel to confirm that they do not unlawfully restrict protected activity.
Manager briefings: Brief managers before election season on protected activity, state-specific protections, and voting leave obligations.
Consistency audits: Check whether rules about symbols, apparel, and internal posts have been applied consistently across causes and viewpoints.
Documented rationale: When restricting expression in customer-facing or safety-sensitive settings, document the legitimate business reasons and apply them uniformly.
Escalation paths: Route disputes about political expression to HR or employee relations early, before disciplinary steps are taken.
Starbucks illustrates the reputational side of enforcement. In June 2020, an internal memo told employees they could not wear Black Lives Matter apparel, citing the company's dress code prohibition on items promoting political, religious, or personal causes. After a public backlash, the company reversed course within days, allowed employees to wear the pins and shirts, and said it would produce its own shirts (NBC News, 2020). The episode showed how a rule that may appear neutral on paper can be read as viewpoint-specific when it is applied to one cause at a moment of intense public attention.
Whole Foods Market shows that the legal outcome can differ from the reputational one. In 2020, the grocer enforced its dress code against Black Lives Matter masks and apparel in stores in several states, and some employees who refused to remove them were disciplined or sent home. In 2026, the National Labor Relations Board held that the displays, though concerted, were not protected because they had not been shown to relate to wages, hours, or working conditions, distinguishing the Home Depot case in which the message was tied to workplace harassment complaints (Morgan Lewis, 2026). Taken together with the appellate decision in the Home Depot matter (Fox, 2025), the Whole Foods decision suggests that the legal treatment of political symbols at work remains unsettled and depends heavily on facts, including the connection to working conditions and the customer-facing context.
A common pitfall is to treat legal compliance as the whole answer. A restriction can be lawful and still damage trust, and a lawful but inconsistent rule can invite claims of discrimination. Legal literacy should inform policy design, but the policy's credibility with employees depends on fairness, consistency, and explanation.
Supporting Civic Participation and Wellbeing
The fifth response addresses the emotional pathways through which political life affects work. Hughes et al. (2026) traced the effects of political news to anxiety and hope, and their recommendations emphasized supporting employee wellbeing and agency rather than trying to control what employees consume. Suggested approaches included stress management resources, encouraging rest and breaks from media, and actions that increase employees' sense of control, such as time off to vote or support for volunteering. Ford et al. (2023) found that political events are a chronic daily stressor and that coping strategies involve tradeoffs between wellbeing and civic engagement. Organizations can ease that tradeoff by making it easier for employees to participate in civic life while protecting time for recovery.
Effective approaches:
Time to vote: Provide paid time to vote or flexible scheduling on and around Election Day, regardless of whether state law requires it.
Nonpartisan civic resources: Share neutral information about voter registration and polling logistics without endorsing candidates or positions.
Acknowledging stress: Normalize the reality that many people find election seasons stressful and remind employees of mental health and employee assistance resources.
Recovery space: Encourage meeting-free blocks, realistic deadlines, and flexibility in the days around major political events.
Agency through contribution: Offer volunteer time that employees can direct to causes of their choice, which can convert helplessness into constructive action.
Patagonia, the outdoor apparel company, has closed on Election Day since 2016, and in 2018 it helped launch the Time to Vote coalition with Levi Strauss & Co. and PayPal, encouraging companies to ensure that workers do not have to choose between voting and earning a paycheck. More than 2,000 companies have since joined the pledge. For the 2024 election, Patagonia closed its U.S. stores, offices, and warehouses on October 29 and gave its more than 2,000 U.S. employees a paid day to vote early and volunteer (Patagonia, 2024). Patagonia is also an unusually outspoken company on public issues, so its approach should not be read as politically neutral in every respect. The time-to-vote element, however, is a nonpartisan practice that any organization can adopt.
The need for such support is clear in the data. In Brightmine's 2025 survey, only 20% of employees said their employer acknowledged the emotional toll of the political environment, while 47% said their workplace had no policy governing political discussion (Brightmine, 2025). A simple acknowledgment from leaders that the election period may be difficult, paired with tangible resources, costs little and addresses a gap many employees perceive.
A common pitfall is to frame wellbeing support in ways that imply which outcome employees should be upset about. Messages after an election that express sympathy for one side's disappointment can alienate employees on the other side and confirm suspicions of institutional bias. Leaders should acknowledge that people may be experiencing a range of reactions, focus on care and shared work, and avoid commentary on the result.
Building Long-Term Civil Capacity
Election seasons expose weaknesses that exist all year. Organizations that handle political tension well tend to have invested in three enduring capabilities: psychological safety, politically fair talent systems, and a principled approach to external advocacy.
Psychological Safety as Infrastructure
Psychological safety, the shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk taking, predicts learning behavior and team performance (Edmondson, 1999) and has become one of the most studied constructs in organizational behavior (Edmondson & Lei, 2014). It is directly relevant to political strain. In teams with high psychological safety, employees are more likely to voice disagreement about work, admit mistakes, and ask for help, and they are less likely to interpret a colleague's political comment as a sign of hostility. In teams without it, political tension can drive the self-censorship and withdrawal documented in the research above (Hughes et al., 2026; Kim et al., 2022). Building psychological safety requires leaders to invite input, respond constructively to bad news, and model fallibility. These practices make teams more resilient to all forms of conflict, including political conflict.
There is also a broader civic benefit. Political scientists have long observed that the workplace is one of the few settings where Americans regularly encounter people with different political views, and that such exposure can increase awareness of the reasons behind opposing views (Mutz & Mondak, 2006). Workplaces with strong psychological safety are better positioned to preserve this function, allowing employees who disagree to see one another as competent, decent colleagues.
Fair and Politically Neutral Talent Decisions
The evidence that political identity influences hiring and promotion decisions (Colonnelli et al., 2025; Gift & Gift, 2015; Roth et al., 2020) suggests that organizations should treat political bias as a talent-management risk, much as they treat other forms of bias. Roth et al. (2017) proposed that political affiliation can influence employment decisions through perceived similarity and identification, the same mechanisms that underlie other forms of affinity bias. Practical safeguards include structured interviews with standardized questions, clear evaluation criteria, guidance discouraging the use of political information found on social media in screening, and periodic review of promotion and assignment decisions for patterns that may reflect political affinity. Because political views are often inferred rather than disclosed, these safeguards also protect employees from being judged on assumptions about their beliefs.
Purpose, Values, and a Principled Stance on External Advocacy
The third capability is clarity about when and how the organization itself will speak on public issues. Employee expectations conflict sharply, and organizations that improvise their stance under pressure often satisfy no one. The Walt Disney Company's experience in 2022 is a case in point. After the company's initial muted response to Florida's Parental Rights in Education legislation, which critics called the "Don't Say Gay" bill, hundreds of employees took part in walkouts, and the chief executive publicly apologized for not speaking out sooner and said the company would reassess its approach to advocacy (Hernandez, 2022). At the other end of the spectrum, Google's chief executive responded to the 2024 sit-ins over Project Nimbus, a cloud contract with the Israeli government, by emphasizing that the workplace was not a place to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics, after the company had dismissed more than 50 employees (Business Standard, 2024; Fox Business, 2024; KTVU FOX 2, 2024). Microsoft dismissed four employees in 2025 after on-site protests over the company's ties to Israel, citing serious breaches of company policies and safety concerns (Al Jazeera, 2025). These cases involve employee activism directed at the employer's own business decisions, which differs from everyday political conversation, but they show how unclear expectations about advocacy and protest can escalate into dismissals, public controversy, and lasting damage to trust.
A principled stance does not require a particular answer. Some organizations will choose to speak only on issues that directly affect their business, employees, or mission; others will choose a broader advocacy role. What matters is that the criteria are explicit, communicated in advance, and applied consistently, and that the organization distinguishes between its own institutional voice and the rights of employees to hold and express their own views within conduct-based rules. When leaders explain the criteria before a controversy arises, employees can disagree with a decision while still seeing it as legitimate.
Conclusion
Political polarization is not a temporary disruption that leaders can wait out. Partisan animosity is deeply rooted and persists after elections end (Fasching et al., 2024), and political events affect employees through anxiety and hope whether or not they discuss politics at work (Hughes et al., 2026). The research reviewed here shows that political strain carries real costs for engagement, helping, civility, retention, and legal risk, but also that conversations among willing colleagues can support wellbeing (Kuhn et al., 2026) and that leaders' responses shape whether conflict harms performance (Reinwald et al., 2022). The organizations that fare best are not those that silence politics, nor those that let it run unchecked, but those that set conduct-based norms, equip managers, build civility deliberately, respect the law, and care for employees as both workers and citizens. With the 2026 midterm elections only days away, these practices are timely, but their value extends well beyond any single election.
Practical takeaways for leaders:
Regulate conduct, not belief: Write expression policies that prohibit disrespect, harassment, and pressure while allowing voluntary, respectful conversation, and apply them equally across viewpoints.
Prepare managers before the election: Train managers to avoid initiating political talk, to handle conflict collaboratively, and to use receptive language that lowers defensiveness.
Invest in civility as a team capability: Use sustained, facilitated team processes, measure civility over time, and model respectful disagreement from the top.
Know the legal landscape: Brief managers on protected concerted activity, state off-duty protections, and voting leave, and review dress codes and policies for consistency.
Support civic life and recovery: Provide time to vote, acknowledge election stress without partisan framing, and protect time for rest around major political events.
Guard talent decisions against political bias: Use structured selection and promotion processes and discourage the use of political information in evaluating people.
Decide your advocacy criteria in advance: Clarify when the organization will speak publicly on issues and distinguish institutional voice from employees' own views.
Research Infographic
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Jonathan H. Westover, PhD, Chief Research Officer (Nexus Institute for Work and AI); Co-Founder & Chief Workforce and Learning Officer (Future State University); Founder & CEO (Human Capital Innovations); Professor of Organizational Leadership & Change (UVU). Read Jonathan Westover's executive profile here.
Suggested Citation: Westover, J. H. (2026). Politics Comes to Work: Election-Season Polarization, Employee Wellbeing, and How Leaders Can Protect Civility Without Silencing Voice. Human Capital Leadership Review, 40(3). doi.org/10.70175/hclreview.2020.40.3.5
