New civil discourse policies meant to stymie polarizing debates at Minnesota workplaces

As election season ramps up, polarized conversations — some becoming vitriolic — are showing up in workplaces.

Minnesotans are complaining about snide remarks and name calling at an array of jobs, from local banks to debt collection agencies, moving companies to orchestra halls.

As work conversations shift toward the presidential election, immigration, book bans and conspiracy theories, employment attorney Randi Winter's phone starts ringing.

The calls are "more urgent when it's a really involved confrontation that gets escalated between two employees or two groups of employees that have very different political views," said Winter, who works at Spencer Fane.

The employers are looking for advice on policies that can tamp down the discourse without violating workers' free-speech rights.

The Amherst H. Wilder Foundation in St. Paul is so concerned how the 2024 election is affecting its 480 workers, it is launching an internal-messaging campaign designed to help employees feel safer and supported amid the dicey political rhetoric.

"This is a political climate like there has never been before and it's causing tension," said Wilder spokeswoman Maria Jamero. "We want to make sure that our staff is taken care of, so they know where to go, who to talk to, how to reach out to supervisors and to leverage our employee wellness program."

For Jamero, the outreach can't come soon enough.

"Personally, I have anxiety about the election and just the political climate that we are in," she said.

Reports of escalated conflict inside workplaces followed the recent assassination attempt on presidential candidate Donald Trump and the seismic shakeup in the election after President Joe Biden dropped out and Vice President Kamala Harris became the likely Democrat nominee to face former President Trump.

That led the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) to send an email blast to its 320,000 human resources members to set some civility ground rules for the office. The group is offering free tools to help.

SHRM dubbed August "Civility Month" and created a "Prohibited Political Activity Policy" template that any employer can adopt if they need help explaining to workers what will and won't be tolerated in the office during this election season.

The sample policy states that putting up political posters, collecting campaign contributions, using company equipment to spread political messages or using hostile language at work won't be tolerated.

"Around 67 million acts of incivility happen in the workplace per day on average" and the current political climate isn't helping, said SHRM senior researcher Derrick Scheetz.

One employer told Stacy Thiry, a Florida mental health counselor with Grow Therapy, that workers who used to have civil arguments are now more passionate and taking offense more quickly.

"For a lot of people, it feels intimidating and creates a lot of anxiety," Thiry said. "There is confusion about how much of it is free speech and how much of it [is] nonproductive or even harmful to others. It can feel alienating for some workers who don't feel they can speak up for themselves or say, 'I feel uncomfortable.'"

Thiry advises anyone juggling with political stress at work to find a quiet, safe area and breathe slowly. Walk, move or stretch "to release the stress response you were forced to suppress" during the exchange, she said.

If an employee can't move because they work on an assembly line, at a cash register or desk inside a call center, try humming.

"Humming is a great tool [for] stress. It creates a gap between the thoughts in your mind and sort of resets your nervous system," Thiry said. "You can do that anywhere, even in between calls."

Richfield resident Kirsten Johnsonwishes she had that advice early on.

The former National Guard contract supervisor remembers 2016 when two former subordinates went from joking at work about their respective fundraising efforts for Trump and Hillary Clinton to name calling and explosive meetings.

"It got really heated. It was stressful. The whole team was uncomfortable," Johnson said. Finally, "we had a 'come to Jesus' meeting."

Johnson explained to the two that they either "learn to play nice," unfriend each other on Facebook and quit snipping at each other, or they could find themselves transferred or fired.

Johnson recently changed jobs and now works for the state of Minnesota. At her old job, colleagues leaned right. Her new colleagues lean left. She's an independent voter so has noticed the assumptions that all workers at a job will simply sway one way politically. That's not always the case, which can cause workers to keep quiet, she said.

To help its own clients plus others navigate the turmoil, Spencer Fane's Minneapolis office will host a workplace civility webinar on Sept. 18 for human resource managers, lawyers and small-business owners in Minnesota and across the Midwest.

Big employers probably don't need the tutorial, Winter said. They often already have policies in place since they operate in multiple states and must be sensitive to different viewpoints.

But smaller workplaces might need to set policies, she said.

Winthrop & Weinstine employment attorney Laura Pfeiffer in Minneapolis said her team tries to teach clients their workers can certainly talk about politics but must "do so in a productive, constructive way."

"When we get called, it's usually not because there was only a political discussion. It was because a political discussion happened in a way that was unprofessional and heated. There was yelling or name calling or other disrespectful behavior. Or someone perceived it as threatening," Pfeiffer said.

Managers can sometimes quickly cut tensions and refocus energies by saying, "It's time to get back to work" or "Let's agree to disagree and move on."

"At the end of the day, generally people should be working," Pfeiffer said.