Keynote/Tedx Speaker, CEO of Qualigence International, Entrepreneur and Investor. Helping companies identify, select and develop talent.
Hinterhaus Productions 2016
Recently I had a conversation with an HR leader that truly shocked me. They told me that they had decided not to hire a candidate purely because of said candidate’s political affiliation. In their words, “I don’t want someone that I completely disagree with on my team. I don’t want to have arguments in the office.”
As a result, they ended up hiring another candidate they said was equally qualified, but of a different political persuasion. Bear in mind, this person was the No. 2 HR leader at an organization that’s a household name.
Given how divided the country has become, I have no doubt this happens all too often in recruiting and executive search nowadays. It’s also easier than ever to guess a candidate’s political beliefs by viewing their social media profiles.
There are a lot of factors to consider here. The first is that in an age of heightened social awareness and social media, companies are afraid to be tried in the court of public opinion. Every company knows the risks of a PR nightmare should one of their employees say something that ends up going viral.
While I understand the concern here, there's another factor that a lot of people are missing: the damage of only hiring people who agree with us.
Destroying Diversity Of Opinion
If you refuse to hire people who disagree with you, what does that do for diversity of thought and even diversity of background? We lose out on new perspectives and ideas. As a result, it’s harder to innovate and brainstorm new, more effective processes. Furthermore, it's likely you will stop representing your full customer base among your staff. Few businesses can say that all their customers are of a certain political persuasion.
If you stop hiring people on one side of the aisle or the other, sooner or later you’ll lose the ability to understand and connect with your customers. It’s a recipe for disaster in terms of marketing and sales.
Going a step further, you have to consider what this exclusive attitude does to your culture.
Creating A Stifled Culture Afraid Of Different Ideas
Part of why people are don’t want to hire those with different perspectives is this growing fear of arguments and division in the workplace. While I understand the concern, trying to create a homogenous workforce is not the solution.
If you insist that your team members aren’t allowed to talk about politics, all you really achieve is stopping people who disagree with one another from talking about politics. The people who do agree will continue to discuss politics... but they’ll do it behind closed doors. As a result, now you have two silos that only talk to each other and avoid anyone with a different perspective.
As you can imagine, this creates an environment where people are afraid to speak openly. You may think it only affects political discussion, but it’s bound to bleed into other areas of work. Teams become less cohesive. People are afraid to share different ideas for fear of being ostracized. Infighting becomes more common and morale inevitably drops.
This worsening political divide is a very tough and complicated issue. But we only make it worse with exclusive hiring decisions or banning discussion of sensitive topics in the workplace.
So what’s a more productive approach?
How HR And Leaders Can Best Approach The Growing Political Divide
I’m a firm believer in encouraging open, respectful discussion of differences among my teams. I remind my teams often that it’s okay to disagree. It’s healthy to discuss different opinions and perspectives, so long as both parties are respectful of one another. We may not change the other party’s opinion, but we can still walk away with a greater understanding of each other.
HR and business leaders have to remember the trickle-down effect of leadership. If you avoid healthy disagreement, refuse to talk about differences and so forth, your team will do the same. If you get heated when someone respectfully challenges your perspective, your reports will model that behavior.
Instead, I encourage leaders and HR to work together to not only create policies for open discussion but also model the behavior they want to see at the organization.
Despite your best efforts, you will always have team members who disagree on sensitive topics. It’s an unavoidable part of life. It’s high time we stopped trying to avoid these disagreements and turned them into opportunities to learn from one another.
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