America’s political divisions are infecting workplaces, top HR guru says: One in five workers say politics creates animosity at work and expects it to get worse in election year
- More than half of employees say they have witnessed incivility at work in the past week
- About 33 percent said they expected this to get worse this year, an election year
The country’s divisive politics are partly responsible for the growing hostility in America’s workplaces, and things will only get worse this year with the presidential election, according to a leading HR expert.
Johnny C. Taylor, executive director of the Society for Human Resources Management, said a culture of name-calling has spread from politics to the office.
The group’s survey of 1,000 U.S. workers found that two-thirds had witnessed incivility at work in the past month and about 57 percent had witnessed it the week before alone.
He said the problem is not just politics, but a growing trend among employees to bring their “whole selves” or their “authentic selves” to the workplace – undermining the guardrails for acceptable behavior – and the disruption of the pandemic and working from home when there was no one had to be civil.
But this year, a year before the presidential elections, the emphasis is mainly on politics. A third of respondents said they think the problem will worsen over the next 12 months as Donald Trump and Joe Biden battle for the White House.
Last week’s State of the Union address was marred by bickering, led by the likes of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican controversialist and conspiracy theorist
Taylor said about 20 percent of employees said political affiliations contributed to a toxic environment.
“Either they felt so uncomfortable that they didn’t open their mouths, or they were attacked, not physically, but verbally, or there were negative consequences in the workplace related to their political values,” he said.
‘And that was a real surprise for us.’
The question was first asked in 2019, ahead of a contentious election cycle, he said, and the result remained stable in 2024, he said.
The past month has illustrated the coarsening of American political discourse.
Last week, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republicans heckled the president during his State of the Union address. Their unruly behavior would once have been unthinkable during the solemn annual occasion.
But they are simply following the lead of their party’s presumptive presidential candidate.
Donald Trump on Saturday mocked Joe Biden’s stutter and dry cough during a rally in Rome, Georgia — the first campaign stop after Super Tuesday and President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address
At a rally in Georgia last week, former President Trump mocked his rival for the White House by slurring his words and pretending to stutter, echoing Biden, who has stuttered since childhood.
And he said, ‘everything Joe Biden touches turns to s***.’
Biden has his own history of insults. He called Trump “a clown” in one of their 2020 debates and told the then-president to “shut up.”
And before a small audience of donors in California, he suggested Trump’s recent comments were the ramblings of an insane person, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “crazy SOB.”
“You know you can’t say something to someone based on their race, gender, national origin, etc.,” Taylor said.
“But virtually anyone is free to openly discriminate against people or create a hostile environment based on their political beliefs.”
He added that the result of such high levels of incivility was a retention problem, an impact on productivity and a general blemish on workplace culture.