April Eichmeier, emerging media professor at the University of St. Thomas College of Arts and Sciences, recently spoke with Twin Cities Business about the complexities of discussing political topics at work and how companies can plan ahead.
From the story:
The size of an organization matters, too. Speech restrictions at a giant Fortune 500 with thousands of employees are obviously much harder to implement than they would be at smaller businesses.
Whatever policy a company chooses, it’s best to be proactive and specific. “Now is the time to be thinking about it,” says April Eichmeier, assistant professor of strategic communications in the Emerging Media Department at the University of St. Thomas. “If you make a plan for when and if a controversy comes up, it’s going to be much easier to execute on than to make it up on the fly.”
She also suggests doing a risk assessment and asking specific questions about policy violations. What’s the consequence for a specific violation? A warning, or something more severe?
It doesn’t hurt to get employee feedback either, she notes.
“(A workplace) can involve employees” in the policy, Eichmeier says. “This doesn’t have to be a situation where management sits in a room and makes decisions from on high.”
