Post-Election, Communicators Can Help Make Workplaces More Civil

After the 2024 election, workplaces “are going to be feeling a lot of emotion, a lot of internal and team conflict,” said Tina Beaty, chief brand and marketing officer at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). To diffuse tensions at work, “We need to give each other a moment of grace and space.”

Beaty was PRSA’s guest on Nov. 5, for a special Election Day episode of Strategies & Tactics Live on LinkedIn. (Watch the full episode here.)

The society’s third-quarter Civility Index showed a 27% rise in employees who say clashing political viewpoints are causing incivility at work. Some 84% of survey respondents said the current political climate is teaching Americans to see one another as the enemy. 

However, Beaty said communicators have “the power to shift the tonality and the words that we use” to mitigate the us-versus-them mentality that has pervaded the country.

According to SHRM, most employees, about 68%, would like to see their managers do more to promote and model civility in their teams, she said.

John Elsasser, editor-in-chief of Strategies & Tactics and host of S&T Live, asked what steps business leaders and internal communicators can take to maintain workplace civility in the days following the election.

With “every single story, every single email that we as communicators put out there, are we adding to the incivility, either directly or indirectly, or are we helping to [provide] a peaceful resolution against incivility?” Beaty said. 

PR professionals should “step back before we finalize any document and think through whether we have an opportunity to reduce discord.”