Election season’s in full swing, and you know what that means: a lot of heated political conflict in the workplace. How confident are you that your managers will cool things down the right way — without breaking the law?

Of course, political discussions don’t always turn bad. But it’s a slippery slope, and too often, debates cause rifts between co-workers that make it harder to work together. Companies need to plan ahead so managers can jump in before a fight starts and productivity suffers.

How far can managers go to prevent conflict? Pretty far — private employers have a lot of leeway when it comes to limiting speech and expression that gets in the way of running a business.

That means you can ban political talk, candidate signs, campaign buttons, etc., and prevent employees from pushing their views on co-workers or customers.

Still, there are legal pitfalls bosses can run into. Some things supervisors need to know:

• Employees must be given time to go to the polls, and companies can’t interfere with someone’s right to vote freely.
• Some states, such as California, New York, Mississippi and Missouri, have laws that keep employers from disciplining people for off-duty political activities. For example, one woman sued her employer after she was fired for putting a political bumper sticker on her car.
• Other states, like Arizona, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, prohibit companies from trying to influence employees to vote a certain way.
• Managers need to be especially careful of political talks that can lead to conflicts about race, sex, national origin, religion or other protected classes — those can easily turn into claims about a hostile work environment.
• Policies restricting political speech should be enforced consistently, regardless of political viewpoint. Even when there’s no legal threat, that’s the smart thing for managers to do.

Keys to cooling conflict

What about just keeping morale and productivity high when employees disagree on hot topics? Here’s some advice for supervisors:

• Don’t overreact. Co-workers can find ways to fight when they talk about almost anything. Managers shouldn’t start punishing people just because politics are brought up.
• Focus on work. It’s almost impossible to restrict what people can and can’t talk about, and employers don’t necessarily want to. If employees can have civil discussions, that’s fine. Bosses probably don’t want to jump in unless things turn ugly and people’s work suffers.
• Respond to complaints. Once an employee comes to his or her manager with a problem, then it’s time to take action.

Tags: free speech, political debate at work, politics, workplace conflict