Las consecuencias de las elecciones: cómo gestionar la política en el lugar de trabajo

Gene Marks (00:00)

Lisa, tell me, what should employers be looking out for with the new administration? Let's see how diplomatically you can, you can address that. 

Lisa Reyes (00:09)

Let me grab my crystal ball right here. 

Gene Marks (00:11)

I'm just kidding. Exactly. I thought you were going to put on, like, a helmet and, like, a body armor suit or whatever. 

Announcer (00:22)

Welcome to Paychex THRIVE, A Business Podcast where you'll hear timely insights to help you navigate marketplace dynamics and propel your business forward. Here's your host, Gene Marks. 

Gene Marks (00:38)

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Paychex THRIVE Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Gene Marks. I've got two great guests on speaking with me today, Alisha Moberly and Lisa Reyes. They are both talent enablement partners at Paychex, here to talk about a webinar that they recently did. But before we even get into the details of the webinar, I just had to ask you guys, first of all, thank you both for joining. Thank you so much. 

Lisa Reyes (01:05)

Thanks for having us. 

Alisha Moberly (01:06)

Yeah, thank you. 

Gene Marks (01:06)

Yep. Glad that you're here. You know, Talent Enablement Partners, I'm not quite sure what that means. Who wants to tell me? 

Lisa Reyes (01:14)

I can explain what we do. So, we have a center of excellence that we are part of, and I'll break that down in a second. But our job specifically for talent enablement is, you know, we are behind the scenes that support about 700 Paychex HR professionals. We help with resources upskilling, providing solutions to basically support the client experience. So, while it's a lot of talent, a lot of talent partnership, we do have a lot of service strategy that we're working as well, combining those two forces behind the scenes to support our 700 HR Business Partners. 

Gene Marks (01:56)

That's really cool. First of all, you have to know I've never really been affiliated with anything near excellence. So, I do give you guys hats off for being involved in something like this. So just out of curiosity, what kind of can you give me an example or two of the type of specific services you would provide to support Paychex customers? 

Lisa Reyes (02:17)

Yeah. So, it's a lot of specific, different HR strategies and tactical work that we support our HR Business Partners that they take to every client engagement and interaction that they have. You know, they have their own book of business with their clients. And we are here whether it's some sort of HR solution, you know, that you need to build like an HR infrastructure. If it's something more timely and relevant, so, such as topics that we're talking about today, we provide resources, we provide engagement tools to Help support our HRBPs that support our clients. 

Alisha Moberly (02:58)

We're getting ready. I've got an example for you. 

Gene Marks (03:01)

Sure, yeah, go ahead. 

Alisha Moberly (03:02)

We are getting ready to roll out an initiative on workforce planning to our HR Business Professionals. So, giving them the tools and resources that they need to help their clients with their workforce planning. So, everything from a business continuity plan to, to change management to secession planning, things along that line. 

Gene Marks (03:21)

That is great. Before the election, you guys did this great webinar which I watched, which was all about navigating politics in the workplace. And there were a lot of amazing points that you gave. And the idea was, obviously leading up to the election, there's all sorts of things going on that could create different types of good and bad work environments related to the election. So, you were offering some advice and thoughts for business owners and HR people to help navigate that. But the election is over. So. But you know, number one is we're still post-election. I know a lot of people are still, you know, absorbing the results of that election. And also, there's going to be another election in two years and another presidential election in four years. Like not an issue that's going to go away. And to me it's like this is the kind of thing that should be done. You know, these are the kinds of rules and procedures, policies that a business should have all the time. And this isn't just something that you implement a month before an election. So, for those of you that are watching or listening to this, watch the webinar. It's really good. There's a link to the webinar in the show notes. So let me go to you, Lisa, first, and I've got a list of these questions here. So, the first question is this, now that election day is over, what is top of mind for employers? 

Lisa Reyes (04:39)

Yeah. So, I think number one right now is going to be those post-election conversations in the workplace about both candidates, their people's views, differing views. And top of mind for employers is understanding civility. Now, I want to talk about a really important stat that the Society of Human Resources Management just came out with about a month or two ago. There's about 61 million workers in the workforce every day. And collectively there's about 202 million acts of incivility that they're dealing with every day. So, I could just imagine how that number has grown right before the election and now afterwards. 

Gene Marks (05:24)

So that's an unbelievable stat. And you're absolutely right. I mean, I'm assuming that whatever acts of uncivility, however we define that that number has probably been going up and will continue to go up, even post-election. Right? 

Lisa Reyes (05:38)

Yeah. So, I just think, you know, I don't see this stopping anytime in the future. So, this, even though the elections passed, it's something to keep top of mind for employers, their leaders and their employees is, you know, promoting and encouraging their managers and their employees to think before they act and be mindful about their communication. Right. Try to find that shared, those shared common goals or common ground so that we can unite on things and those types of topics. I think too, there's resources that employers can be providing. So, an employee assistance program, also known as an EAP, if you need assistance. Those types of resources are out there for employers and for their employees. Other things that we want to keep in mind are diversity and inclusion efforts. So maybe forming discussions in a safe place to have that inclusive feeling and foster, you know, a supportive working environment for your employees. 

Gene Marks (06:45)

That is great. All right, Alisha, let me turn to you with the next question that was asked. And first of all, let me preface this with a couple of facts. I mean, more than half of the workers in this country right now are either Gen Z or Millennials, which means they're under 40. And in fact, a great many of them are under the age of 30. Some of these people have this is first election that they're going through or maybe second. There's a lot of passion that's involved. Saying that is that more than half of business owners in this country are over the age of 50. So, you've got these younger workers that have gone through these elections, and this is the first couple that they've been through maybe, and again with some passion. Then you've got, you know, the majority of business owners being run by people that are older Gen Xers and Boomers that have been around the block one or few times. You know. So, Alisha, this question got asked. I think it's really relevant. I mean, you know, what is the difference between an employer's political stance versus their tolerance? 

Alisha Moberly (07:45)

Yeah, it's a, it's a great question. And you're right, there's so many generational differences in the workforce right now. So definitely a challenge for employers. But when we talk about an employer taking a political stance, we're talking about affiliation with a particular party or maybe a particular political topic. So, when we talk about stance, that's what we're referring to. When we talk about tolerance, we're more talking about what an employer is allowing in their workplace place in terms of political expression and conversations. So, one of the things that we talked about in the podcast were some different approaches that an employer could consider when they're thinking about their tolerance level. Right. So we talked about a high tolerance approach. So, this would be maybe more appropriate for those larger companies, those larger corporations where there's a little bit more standard policies and procedures in place, there's professionalism, there's, you know, some respect, things along that line so they're more comfortable, or maybe more comfortable allowing more of those political conversations because they trust that their employees can do so in a decent manner. Right. And keeping upholding that respect, if you will. We also talked about a more neutral or middle ground approach where maybe they're limiting some behaviors when we're talking about politics. Right. Like maybe, for example, they're not letting employees come in and handing out any sort of materials to support a particular party or something along those lines. When we think about that neutral approach. So just limiting some of that behavior in conversations. Then we talked about more of a low tolerance approach. So where companies are saying, you know, we're really going to limit any sort of political expression and, or discussion in the workplace. So those were some of the different approaches that we discussed. They are by no means a one-size-fits-all, but just things for employers to consider. 

Gene Marks (09:55)

Sure. You know, and this question can be back to you, Lisa, but really. Or sorry, Alisha, but Lisa, you could jump in on it as well. I mean, I sometimes it blows my mind. Like, I live in the Philly area. My Firm has about 600 clients all up and down in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, north and south. And I can tell you how many clients I go to. These are small businesses where the owners put political signs up on their lawns or are clear in their affiliate, their political position. There was a story going around. There was a deli, a delicatessen really well known in the Main Line of Philadelphia and lower Marion that had like a political ad film there for a political party. And that ruffled the feathers of others. I mean, to me it's like, it's just, I don't know, like you're really asking for trouble, not only just with your employees, but your customers as well. And I guess for both of you guys, like, as you're experts in this, so you deal with a lot of companies, I mean, do you encourage or do you discourage business owners taking up political standards? Lisa, I don't know if you want to start with that. 

Alisha Moberly (11:03)

There's. I can jump in. There's definitely a lot of viewpoints on this. Right. A lot of different opinions out there. I guess from our perspective, we're in HR. So, I'm going to give this, you know, from an HR perspective, it's not against any law by any means to take a political stance or to not take a political stance as a company. But I do think from an HR perspective, as a best practice, it's, it's best that a company remain neutral. Right. You run the risk either way of maybe alienating your employees, could even potentially go farther and alienate customers. So, like I said, from that HR perspective, best practice, just remain neutral when we're talking about a political stance. 

Gene Marks (11:48)

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I've written on this before in the past and just like keep, keep politics out of business. That's my opinion. I mean, again, I don't work for Paychex, but I just, that's just, that's just my opinion. And I think that, that it's, it's just focus on your business and you'll, you'll wind up upsetting less people. Lisa, you know, Alisha had mentioned before about creating like political tolerance or tolerating certain political activities within a business. And yes, we're looking forward and there's going to continue to be political activity. It's never going to go away. So, Lisa, you know, who, who the company you think should be involved in coming up with like the policies for political, you know, tolerating certain political activities, what should be tolerated, what is okay, what is not okay, who, you know, you know, that kind of thing. What are your thoughts on that? 

Lisa Reyes (12:37)

Yeah, so I think it's going to depend on the business. Right. A one-size-fits-all approach isn't going to work, but I'll give you a couple examples. So, if you had a small business, predominantly, you know, the owner's in charge and maybe does all the things, wears all the hats. So, when it's small business, you're going to have the owner, the CEO heading that. Now if you have a larger business, you're obviously going to have the CEO or the owner. You're going to have your department heads, you're going to have HR in that conversation. And once those things are determined, you know, it's great to have a roundtable discussion to hear other viewpoints other than just ownership. You'll then want to think about how we going to communicate this and what's the strategy behind it. So, what we usually recommend is starting from the top. So once that tolerance stance, or I shouldn't say stance, once that tolerance is decided upon, you know, we're first, we're going to talk to the managers or the department leads or the supervisors, and that's going to trickle down to the employees. And then you're going to think about too, how do we communicate that to the employees? So, what's the industry, you know, what's the culture? Is it going to be one big meeting? Is it going to be a virtual meeting? Is, you know, or in person, Is it going to be just something you post on your intranet? Is it going to be an email? So a lot of thought should go into your company culture, how leadership communicates. And that should be your strategy kind of behind how you decide who's going to take that tolerance decision and how it's going to be communicated. 

Gene Marks (14:09)

Right. The communication of that, obviously, is critical once there's, you know, there's definitions of tolerance and the policy itself is created. But just to make sure I'm getting the takeaway from you. So clearly, the business owner or owners should be involved in that, you know, in that decision. But is there, would you recommend anybody else? Like, you know, as an owner of a company, I only have 10 people, so it's not good. But I'm thinking of clients of mine that might have 100 people or, you know, 150 people, and they're, they want to come up with this policy of, you know, tolerance. You know, a lot of business owners, like, well, I don't want all this on my head. I'd like to have a little committee here to get feedback from. Who would you choose? Like, what specific types of people or persons would you want to be on this sort of governing committee that would determine what those tolerance policies are? 

Lisa Reyes (14:55 - 00:15:35]

I think if you traditionally think of who's part of an executive team. So, I would say the CFO, I would say you want your director of HR, whatever the title is, for the head of HR. If you have an operations manager, I think you want that person in the meeting. And depending on how many there are, I don't think it'd be bad if you had your top leaders for different departments in the meeting as well, because you're going to hear different voices in different areas of the business that might be beneficial to have all those voices in the meeting to address different areas of concern that you might not hear from one area that you would hear from the other. 

Gene Marks (15:35)

Good. All right. That's good advice. All right, Alisha, let me turn to you. So we've talked about creating these policies, determining what we're going to be tolerant about. We've talked about, you know, whether or not the business owner themselves should be, you know, talking politics or not, which I don't think they should be. But again, it's, it's certainly not against the law, but okay, once those policies are created, it's time to enforce them. Now, these are policies on how people are dressing, you know, can they wear buttons, you know, to work of, you know, supporting their candidate or what they might be saying in social media, or, you know, how they're, you know, conducting themselves in the office. How do you enforce this stuff, Alisha? Like, what do you recommend? Say somebody crosses the line or does something that's not, you know, in accordance with the policy. What would you. What would you tell an owner or an HR manager to do? 

Alisha Moberly (16:25)

Yeah, I mean, honestly, it can. It can really be challenging, especially if you're dealing with, let's say, a company that has maybe not ever had any sort of formal policy. Right. Like, this is the first time that they're trying to introduce something of that. So it can definitely be met with some resistance, if you will, from the workforce. I always, I'm big on transparency. Right. Let's be transparent in why we're doing what we're doing. Why are we making the decision to implement these policies? What's it going to do? What's in it for us? What's in it for you? And so I think starting there is always a good idea. Obviously, I'm HR, so I think compliance is the first thing that comes to mind. What compliance obligations do we have as a company in terms of policies that are required from a federal, state, or local level? And just again, being transparent and explaining that. I think also talking about how policies can really help to set clear expectations from both leadership and your frontline staff. And then I think, also talking about how that plays into just an overall healthy workplace culture. Right. Like we're establishing these clear and concise guidelines for you, it's going to really just help promote that. 

Gene Marks (17:51)

I think it's a fair answer, you know, and I think that's, I think that's great. You know, I don't know if we're being naive because, you know, people are still going to come into the office and get into fights, you know, or misbehave, you know, Yankees, you know, Mets, you know, keeping politics out of this. But it's going to happen. And as owners and managers, I guess, you know, we, we've got the policies, we've communicated the policies where, you know, we're going to enforce those policies. But, you know, there are situations that are going to happen in the office that we need to, you know, sort of throw cold water on or bring down the heat as it is. So, I'm curious for both of you. I mean, Lisa, I'll ask you, like, what do you do when there's these conflicts that are going to happen? And they're going to happen regardless of policies, people are still going to be people. So, what advice would you have for us to sort of mitigate those? 

Lisa Reyes (18:45)

Yeah, so it's actually interesting. We do a lot of reporting and what our HR Professionals are working on. And harassment's actually been on the rise leading up to the election. And I know it's going to continue to rise. And, you know, and that's just what it is like if you focus on the actual issue, it's harassment. Right. So, I think sometimes we get paralyzed when we hear the word politics. Like, you get an employee issue and it's two employees fighting about politics, and you're like, oh my gosh, how do I deal with this? Because you hear the word politics and you're like, I'm frozen. And so just remember, remove that politics out of it. And when we get down to it, it's harassment. So as an employer, what have you, what is your company's policy on harassment? Right. So, looking at that. Now, if you don't have a policy on harassment, let's talk about best practice. So best practice is going to be investigate the situation, right? Look at what your past practice has been. So, trying to stay consistent in how you're dealing with employees that do have harassing behaviors or any claims that have come in, because that essentially is going to avoid also discrimination claims that could come up in the future. So again, I just think it's really important, remove the politics, focus on harassment. How would you address that and move forward that way? 

Alisha Moberly (20:07)

Another thing I'll add to that to just touch on too, is starting with your leadership and making sure that they are trained and equipped to handle such situations. Right. Like make sure they are first in the know about your harassment policy, first and foremost. And then second, make sure they know what to do when they receive some report of some sort of conflict happening, or maybe they witness it themselves. Making sure that your leaders are equipped to handle such situations. 

Gene Marks (20:38)

This also gets back to my comment that or the conversation we were just having a little bit earlier about the business owners, because you guys are both saying about management and the owners getting involved and lowering the temperature a little bit. But again, if you're running a business and it's clear that you side with one thing politically, whatever that is. It's tough to come in as an independent, credible person to say, hey, everybody, calm down. Both sides are whatever. Which is another reason why I always say to my clients, just try to keep politics out of your business. At least it can also help you resolve issues as well, because people will at least observe you as being somewhat independent when you come and try and get involved. But it's great advice. We talked about employees. What about customers? I mean, this should be common sense, right? But, like, I don't know, you're a purchasing manager and you're on the phone with a customer, or you want a zoom call, and the customer has a different political opinion and starts talking politics. I'm assuming if you're a responsible manager, you're not getting into it with that customer. But what do I know? You know, I don't. You know. So, what is your advice, Alisha? You know, what would you tell clients when it comes to dealing with your differences in political opinions with your, with your customers? 

Alisha Moberly (21:51)

Well, you're right. It should be common sense. But I always fall back to, let's go back to our policies and our guidelines, right back to the basics, if you will. What are our standards of conduct? What are the expectations of our employees? Again, encouraging that neutral stance, if you will, and really just making sure that your employees understand the level of professionalism and respect that is expected from them. And really, that comes down to, again, training and making sure that your leadership knows these policies and procedures and is enforcing them consistently. I always suggest training on professionalism, maybe even a little on emotional intelligence along with this topic. The other thing, though, that I think is important is you mentioned it, too. Regardless of this, there's going to be things that happen, right? Like, you are going to have conflicts that come up in the workplace and just again, making sure that your leaders are equipped and know to address them promptly and consistently. Good. 

Gene Marks (23:04)

Good. Lisa, I'm going to give you final word. And this is, I think. I don't know who asked this question, you know, for the webinar, but, man, I don't know what their motives were behind this, because it's a tough one. So, Lisa, I'll throw it out to you. Lisa, tell me, what should employers be looking out for with the new administration? Let's see how diplomatically you can. You can address that. 

Lisa Reyes (23:25)

Let me grab my crystal ball right here. 

Gene Marks (23:29)

You're going to put on, like, a helmet and, like, a body armor suit or whatever. 

Lisa Reyes (23:33)

Well, I mean, there's definitely some things. So, when we think of policies and how those are going to shift and obviously affect changing regulations. So, a couple things come to mind. So, in the past year, the National Labor Relations Board had put in place some stricter guidance on classifying workers as independent contractors. What we know about the administration coming in is it's been said that those might be a little bit undone and become a little bit looser on that. So that's something to be aware of. Wage an hour. I think this, this could be a tricky one because we have the second, I guess we could call it like the second installment of the Department of Labor's Overtime Ruling. There was a jump in the salary threshold. So, this affected a lot of workers and employers. So, July 1, 2024, the threshold went up to $43,000 and some change. And now January 1, just three weeks before the new administration steps in, we're going up to about 58,600 and odd dollars. Don't, don't quote me on the exact dollars on them. 

Gene Marks (24:45)

Almost $59,000.

Lisa Reyes (24:46)

It's a significant jump. So, is it likely that this could change? I don't know, I'm going to say probably not. But again, don't have my crystal ball with me. I don't know. But it's something to have top of mind and thinking about as well as the federal minimum wage. So, the current administration and the Harris campaign said if they were to win the federal minimum wage was there was going to be a hike. The Trump administration was not on the same page as that. So, something to be paying attention to, not just the federal, but state and local minimum wages, because those are going to have differing effects. I also would mention this whole taxation on tips. So, both parties were in favor for that. So, I would say that something, you know, especially like industries like hospitality and restaurants, that they're going to want to be paying attention to that because that's going to affect their tip workers and there's a lot of those in those industries. And then other things I think that we should just, you know, employers should just be thinking about, like regulations on AI, immigration reform, and then paid leave, I think will be more likely affecting or being up to the states versus the federal level. So, paying attention to your state and local regulations. So, lots of, lots of stuff's probably going to be coming. Good, good. Some, maybe, some will think not as positive changes. Depends on where you're located and of course, your employee size. So just also paying attention to what's going to be applicable to your business. 

Gene Marks (26:25)

You did a great job with that question. That was pretty impressive. It's a minefield to kind of tiptoe your way through and you handled it very, very well. Lisa Reyes and Alisha Mobley are both Talent Enablement Partners with Paychex. We've been discussing their great webinar that they did just a few weeks ago, Election Year: Navigating Politics in the Workplace. We've got a link to it in the URL for this show. It is every bit, if not more relevant now post-election than it was before the election, so I highly recommend taking a look at it. You'll learn a lot. It will help you manage what is a very, you know, you know, tough environment when it comes to managing workers in such a heated area as politics. So. both of you, thank you so much for joining. It was great discussion, really learned a lot and I appreciate all that you do. 

Lisa Reyes (27:14)

Thanks so much, Gene. Thank you. 

Alisha Moberly (27:15)

Appreciate you having us. 

Gene Marks (27:17)

Everybody, you've been watching and listening to the Paychex THRIVE Podcast. Hopefully you enjoyed it and got as much great information out of it than I did. My name is Gene Marks. If you need any advice or tips or help in running your business, please visit us at paychex.com/thrive and sign up for our newsletter. I promise you will not be disappointed. Thanks again for watching or listening. We'll see you again next time. Take care. Do you have a topic or a guest that you would like to hear on THRIVE? Please let us know. Visit payx.me/thrivetopics and send us your ideas or matters of interest. Also, if your business is looking to simplify your HR, payroll, benefits or insurance services, see how Paychex can help. Visit the resource hub paychex.com/worx. That's W-O-R-X. Paychex can help manage those complexities while you focus on all the ways you want your business to thrive. I'm your host, Gene Marks, and thanks for joining us. Till next time, take care. 

Alisha Moberly (28:16)

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