He who writes for fools always finds a large public.
| Arthur Schopenhauer
Politics at Work
It will likely not surprise anyone that here in the last 30 days of the presidential election cycle — and all the down-ballot races — that political tensions are running high (see Politics at the Dinner Table, below).
There’s a great deal of evidence that political arguments at work cause a lot of problems. A new study from Perceptyx seeks to quantify this issue:
The survey of 2,300 workers found that about nine in ten have experienced some form of conflict with co-workers, but one in three have specifically experienced recent conflict that began as a political disagreement. These political disputes have a far more negative effect on workers. For instance, compared to workers who encounter general conflict, those who have experienced a political altercation are:
5.6x as likely to say their productivity is impacted
4.9x as likely to say their mental health is impacted
3.5x as likely to say their physical health impacted
What’s more, four in five employees who have faced political conflict at work are actively job-seeking — that makes them 1.6x as likely to quit as other employees.
The problem is worse for desk-bound workers, who are twice as likely as their deskless counterparts to have experienced a politics-fueled conflict in the past three months.
The study goes on to reveal generation differences:
More disagreements: Gen Z is most likely to have had a political disagreement at work (1.3x as likely as Millennials, 2x as likely as Gen X, and 2.3x as likely as Baby Boomers)
More discrimination: Gen Z is the generation that is most likely to have experienced bias, prejudice, and/or discrimination in the workplace because of political beliefs (1.2x as likely as Millennials, 1.7x as likely as Gen X, and 5x as likely as Baby Boomers)
More likely to leave: Gen Z is also more likely to consider looking for a new job because of coworkers’ political beliefs (1.5x as likely as Millennials, 2.8x as likely as Gen X, and 6.5x as likely as Baby Boomers)
Research by Morela Hernandez and Michael Pratt has shown that simply ordering workers to avoid political discussions can run counter to other workplace trends:
We question whether setting limits on political discussions by dictating when employees should remain silent is even a viable strategy when work and personal boundaries are as porous as they are today, especially when it comes to politics. Many working professionals interact through informal social media platforms as much as they do in face-to-face meetings. Access to information about colleagues’ personal views on nonwork issues is often readily available. Decreeing that people must stay silent on political issues also seems to run counter to the call for employees to “bring their whole selves” to work. Forbidding discussion of personal topics may be viewed as a step backward or worse: It could prompt turnover of younger employees, who may expect to be able to be transparent about politics at work.
But it can be challenging for the organization to balance the need for personal expression and the polarization that strong political language can lead to.
The challenge is that most of us have personal views about public policy that affects our nonwork lives, and we tend to have strong, visceral reactions toward individuals whose views are different from ours. Equally challenging is that expressing one’s personal views can not only lead to division but also generate a climate of fear in the workplace. The level of emotional activation some people feel when encountering political disagreement can create a tinderbox situation.
It’s no surprise that managers may feel unprepared to deal with conflicts that arise from employees’ political conversations, which have the potential to be especially heated here in the U.S. in the final run-up to the November presidential election. There’s no clear road map to effectively manage polarization in the workplace
They attempt to lay out at least the start of a roadmap, based on a process of seeking to move toward an understanding of, and not a consensus on, political issue:
The goal for managers should be to put in motion a process that employees can use to work through moralized disagreements when they arise. After all, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to resolve the moral certitude individuals experience in their conviction regarding a specific dispute. Consider, for instance, the question of whether the company should release a statement in the aftermath of protests and social unrest to express its support or opposition. These statements often engender more dissatisfaction and division than sensitivity and fellowship because the organization’s position is often touted as being “morally right”; thus, anyone who disagrees with it must be “morally wrong.”
Therefore, rather than expecting top leadership to deliver statements, managers should be prepared to facilitate a process that builds an understanding of, rather than consensus about, hot-button issues that have made their way into the workplace. The primary aim is not to change the minds and hearts of colleagues. It is not about winning the argument. Instead, a process designed to allow employees to talk without fear of exclusion, stigma, or retribution can provide organizations with a more effective approach to dealing with polarization among their ranks. We recommend the following steps to foster such engagement.
Note that this is a bottom-up process, creating a shared atmosphere of openness and psychological safety, and explicitly not leadership expressing political stances and propagandizing to get others to step into line.
One technique Hernandez and Pratt offer which sounds like good first step for this bottom-up transformation is to help all employees — including management — to develop civil discourse skills:
When disruptions are occurring, or when they are anticipated to occur, it’s in an organization’s interest to establish (and train employees on) a process for having constructive dialogue. Hays, an international recruiting firm, established an eight-week program about civil discourse for employees at a time of polarization over discussion of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The Society for Human Resource Management offers similar workshops for corporations. However, such efforts are sparse.
And I thought this insight was a key takeaway:
Psychological research has uncovered complexity’s usefulness as a core antidote to the simplifying dynamics inherent in polarization. Once we view an issue as more complex than we first thought, it can open the door to viewing others more fully. That is, we see people we disagree with not simply as a representative of the moral tribe we’re fighting against but as someone who might share our values in other facets of life. These commonalities become the bedrock for future conversations and cooperation. The more individuals are made to think through different (often conflicting or ambiguous) aspects of an issue, the less likely they are to jump to conclusions.
None of these efforts — or the others the researchers cite — will solve what is a deeply wicked problem. But becoming away of the problem’s complexity, and how all aspects of peoples’ political viewpoints are tied to their sense of identity and their moral foundations, can al least built in some breathing room and decrease the degree of friction.
But remember, Menendez and Pratt start out their paper with a killing stat:
In the wake of the June 2024 debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the number of reported uncivil acts in U.S. workplaces exploded to 201 million a day.
Factoids
NYC’s surface is hard.
70 percent of New York City's surface is made up of hard material like pavement, which prevent rain from reaching the earth’s soil.
| Melissa Enoch, the acting assistant commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection
Which is why many neighborhoods flood during major storms. The city is working to make the surface more porous.
…
Bettering batteries.
Samsung announced a new type of solid-state battery for electric vehicles, that, according to them, are safer, lighter and smaller compared to traditional lithium-ion batteries. They also come with a 20-year lifespan, take only 9 minutes to charge, and can run up to 600 miles per charge.
Would the world become a more peaceful place if — when — we’ve made the long, hard transition to green energy? I’m hoping.
…
Politics at the dinner table.
A 2017 Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 13 percent of respondents had ended a relationship with a family member or close friend because of the presidential election.
…
US Q3 GDP growth blows up.
The projection was -0.1%, actual was 3.2%. Tell your friends and family.
Elsewhere
In We Don't Need 'Self-Help,' We Need Support, Kirsten Powers relates the mant revelations she had as a result of her husband accepting a job at Lego, in Denmark. The biggest is this:
It's worth asking why we have such low expectations of our government and society when citizens of other countries expect and get so much more.
She enumerates the reasons why the Danes are among the happiest people in the world. Note the reference to overwork, which is denigrated:
The government guarantees pretty much anything you can think of: health care, higher education, day care, a year of paid maternity and paternity care, unemployment insurance guaranteeing 80 percent of your wages for two years, and more paid vacation days in a year than many Americans get in a lifetime. The Danish government even put careful thought into designing public spaces and buildings to maximize happiness, believing (correctly) that people's environments influence their sense of wellbeing.
At the time of this book's writing, Danes also worked the shortest work week, 34 hours, of peer countries. "Whereas in the US and the UK, we'd fought for more money at work, Scandinavians had fought for more time—for family leave, leisure, and a decent work-life balance," notes Russell.
Overwork is not a status symbol but is actually frowned upon. "Back home [in London], answering an email at midnight or staying at your desk until 8 pm was considered a badge of honour," writes [Helen] Russell [author of The Year of Living Danishly]. "But in Danish work culture, this implies that you're incapable of doing your work in the time available."
Incredibly, in a survey, 57 percent of Danes said they wouldn't quit their jobs even if they won the lottery. So, Danes can love their jobs rather than making them the center of their lives. This might be because they choose jobs based on what they enjoy, not status because their culture does not reward striving. They also don't need to take a job they despise for the high pay because all their needs are taken care of, so having more money won't make that much of a difference in how they live their lives.
In this election season, Harris seems to be pushing for the US to become more Danish.
Elsewhen
Companies are Private Governments | Stowe Boyd (2021)
The philosopher Elizabeth Anderson is responsible for the concept that businesses run as ‘private governments’, lacking democratic principles that we expect in our ‘public governments’, made up of people we elect to office and the laws and policies we enact through them. In her book, Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It), Anderson explains how we have conserved pre-democratic governance within the business as a holdover from preindustrial practice. As the publisher wrote about her book,
One in four American workers says their workplace is a “dictatorship.” Yet that number probably would be even higher if we recognized most employers for what they are—private governments with sweeping authoritarian power over our lives, on duty and off. We normally think of government as something only the state does, yet many of us are governed far more—and far more obtrusively—by the private government of the workplace.
Might go so far as to say ‘the tyrannical private government of the workplace’ since we have no — or little — say in how we are governed, there.
…
Beneath and Beyond Corporate Culture | Stowe Boyd (2017)
Half-truths, pretense, and fragmentation in contemporary corporate culture
…
Who Owns Work, and Its Future? | Stowe Boyd (2017)
Who gets to speak, and who decides what is within the bounds of legitimate discourse about work.
[I am getting back to work on a non-vella (a short non-fiction book), called A Working Future. Wish me luck.]
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