How global companies handle political talk at work

Amid polarisation, some employers seek to prohibit or rein in political discourse on the clock. Others let it fly. In mid-April, dozens of employees at Google were sacked after staging a sit-in-style protest in the company's California offices, 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 information leaked pertaining to their coverage of the conflict in Gaza. Similar tensions are simmering in workplaces across the globe, splitting employees and putting pressure on companies to act. "Politics is increasingly something that is not confined anymore to just the political arena," says Edoardo Teso, associate professor of managerial economics and decision sciences at Northwestern University, US, adding that personal opinion can “spill over” into the workplace. As elections take place in dozens of countries this year – including in the UK, the US, India, Pakistan and Belgium – political discussion may well crop up in workplaces around the world, leaving business leaders to determine how this will be handled, and what circumstances cross the line. 'In the wrong place at the wrong time' In 2020, leaders at global software firm Intuit began looking for ways to help employees talk constructively about political matters. They noted an increase in politically charged discussions as Covid-19 broke out, and workers disagreed about healthcare guidance and vaccinations. Following the murder of George Floyd, employees spoke heatedly about race relations.Intuit subsequently put in guardrails for how employees can talk about divisive topics on company channels. "We want you to focus on how you're feeling and how things are affecting you as a person, and less on using our internal channels as a platform for your political views," Intuit's chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer, Humera Shahid, tells the BBC of 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 "language that could be hurtful or exclude", according to company policy. Posters are asked to take down content that might be incendiary. "We find 99.9% of the time, the intent is very good," says Shahid. "They just don't recognise that they may be causing harm to another employee." Some employers are altogether prohibiting political discussions at work. One of them is the tech company 37Signals, which owns the project-management platform Basecamp. In 2021, CEO Jason Fried asked the company's employees to refrain from political talk in company communication channels. Roughly one-third of Basecamp's employees quit as a result.