How companies are engaging employees in the 2020 election and beyond

With the U.S. election fast approaching and COVID continuing to disrupt routines, corporate purpose software provider Benevity has been focusing attention on a very important topic: how companies can play a trusted role in empowering civic action for their employees, customers and communities.

Related: Political speech in the workplace: What employers, employees should know

Last month, Brooke Bryant, community affairs manager at Levi Strauss & Co., and Eunice Rho, deputy director of strategic partnerships at the ACLU, joined Erica Graham Jordan, director of goodness solutions, and Sona Khosla, VP of marketing at Benevity to talk about the ways that companies can build an inclusive culture that inspires people to get informed, take civic action and make their vote count.

Here are some of the top questions and answers that were discussed during the webinar:

Why is voting so critically important this year, and how will it look different because of the pandemic?

Eunice Rho: We’re seeing this year reflect some of the trends and patterns that have been present through the existence of the ACLU — policies or laws that are designed to keep certain people away from casting a ballot, including registration restrictions and voter ID laws. With the pandemic, public health experts universally advise everyone to limit congregating, especially in large numbers indoors. Of course, what is in-person voting but almost exactly that?

What we are trying to emphasize at the ACLU, in partnership with many private sector partners, is trying to help people vote by mail so that those who must or strongly prefer to vote in-person can do so safely. We’re trying to work with the private sector by creating reliable, helpful, timely and accurate information that our private sectors partners will help us disseminate to their communities, which of course includes their employees.

What is Levi Strauss & Co. doing to support civic engagement and voting across your employee population?

Brooke Bryant: In 2016, we saw unprecedented levels of engagement from employees who were feeling really civically energized and awakened and looking for ways to act on that. The first thing that we did was to expand our paid time off for volunteering policy to include civic volunteering. So things like participating in marches, registering voters, or even serving on local boards and commissions.

The next thing that we did was to take a look at where we, as a company, could make an impact. We tapped into the expertise of some longtime partners like the ACLU and some new partners like Rock the Vote, and they really brought to our attention the issue of low voter turnout in the US… We saw an opportunity there, and in 2018, we worked with Patagonia and a number of other like-minded companies to launch the Time to Vote coalition, which has a pretty straightforward non-prescriptive goal: simply committing to make sure that your employees have the time that they need to cast their ballot, whatever that looks like for your company.

Underlying everything is that we want to make sure our employees have, not just the time, but the tools and the resources they need to be informed voters. This year, we’re also encouraging employees to use their paid time off to volunteer at the polls.

What does civic engagement look like across the employer community?

Sona Khosla: Last year, Edelman released their trust barometer and found that 75 percent of respondents said they trust their employer over other institutions like government and media. So, we see that people are really turning to their employers as a trusted source of information. We saw this in full force when COVID first hit, and with the elections coming up, we have the opportunity to apply this to helping people navigate this confusing time.

A lot of things Brooke mentioned are fantastic ways to engage people. We encourage companies to broaden the activities they support and promote in the lead up to the election, whether that’s through event-triggered giving, volunteering opportunities, providing time off and tools to help people vote, or offering information so that people can be more discerning consumers of media content. There are many ways to activate, from taking very public and vocal stands on key issues, to simply supporting your people in the causes that they care about.

How can companies tackle voting in conjunction with volunteering?

Eunice Rho: We want to see companies fostering a culture of voting and this can show up in a number of ways. One is joining a coalition like Time to Vote that allows companies to talk to their peers about giving Election Day off, making it a meeting free day, ensuring that everybody across, up and down the company, whether they’re working at a warehouse or at a C-suite, has the same opportunities available to them.

We are also seeing the whole ecosystem of civic engagement being counted as a volunteer activity. Whether that is helping register voters, or maybe you have really proactive employees who want to phone bank to encourage people to turn out, or as Brooke was saying, volunteering to be a poll worker.

Brooke Bryant: For volunteering around voting, we do a lot of the registration drives and “get out the vote” drives. Also, poll working is something that is new to our program this year. It takes hundreds of thousands of mostly volunteer poll workers to pull off a national election. Those people have been traditionally older. Those are the people who are quite vulnerable to COVID-19, so we know that there’s going to be a severe shortage of poll workers. That’s going to lead to long lines and all kinds of election problems. We have joined with a coalition called Power the Polls to recruit poll workers to fill that gap.

If non-partisan messaging is critical to your organization, how do you ensure that your communication around civic engagement feels non-partisan in nature?

Brooke Bryant: Yes, that can be a little bit tricky — especially right now where even just talking about how important it is to vote can feel a little bit partisan. We just keep coming back to this message: It’s not about voting in this election; it’s not about voting this year; it’s about creating an ongoing culture of civic participation. We tell people again and again, it’s not about a party; it’s not about a political candidate; it’s really about participation. We don’t care who you vote for. We just want you to get out there and vote.

Sona Khosla: I love the emphasis on developing a culture around civic engagement. The layer I might add on to that is this is also about making sure that it’s as inclusive as possible. These issues can clearly create some lines if you’re not careful, and it is a highly polarizing time. I think one thing to know is that when you weigh in, no matter how you weigh in, you may get questions or criticism that you’re being partisan, even if that’s not your intent.

It’s important to be aware of that and prep for that so that when you go in, you’re not surprised if that does happen. Perhaps have people who may have different political beliefs review some of your content before you publish it… You don’t have to talk about the candidates. You don’t have to talk about the parties. You can just talk about this time as an opportunity to get engaged.

How do we encourage our younger generation to get more involved beyond just protesting? How do we ensure that they actually show up at the polls and vote?

Eunice Rho: It’s never just one thing that encourages somebody to show up. It’s a series of things. I think Brooke mentioned this before; peer pressure is a really important part of that ecosystem of what encourages somebody to vote, whether that’s seeing their friends, family, colleagues posting that they are voting, or posting information, or talking to them. All of those one-to-one interactions do make a difference. They hear from their employer; maybe they see it on their employer’s social media. I think we can’t underestimate the power that we can have on each other to foster that culture.

Beyond emails and social posts, how do you create energy around civic engagement? What actual resources do you send to your employees?

Sona Khosla: We’re actually gearing up to launch a new content library for civic action through our Missions solution, and it’s allowing companies to really engage their employees in learning about things like mail-in voting, how to register to vote and media misinformation. For example, one of our libraries is all about media mindfulness. How do you spot deep fakes and how do you spot misinformation? We developed this content in partnership with Countable, who’s a fairly well-known resource on civic engagement, and we’ll be making this library available for a limited time during the election season for companies who want to offer it to their people.

What’s one thing that you would like to see come out of this election season in relation to your program?

Brooke Bryant: We would love to see national voter turnout numbers go through the roof! Drilling down a little bit into our employee population, we of course want to see our employees be as empowered and active and engaged as they possibly can, but also want to continue that drumbeat of civic engagement. It’s all about the election right now, but also how we can keep that going in the coming years and in future elections as well. We don’t want this to be a one off or something that ends in November. We want to make sure that this is an ongoing culture that stays with us.

Sona Khosla: I first just want to echo what Brooke said around building that culture of civic engagement and action. Get companies thinking about how they can use their reach and their resources to be able to affect more of that engagement, which brings positive employer brand benefits as well as social outcomes. That’s one piece. The other piece relates to becoming more vocal on topics that matter. I would like to see more companies starting to embrace uncomfortable or charged topics and finding their way in how to do that.

Eunice Rho: I hope we continue to pay attention to this new cultural norm of encouraging civic participation and thinking critically about the systemic issues that are affecting people’s ability to vote. In connection with some of the questions earlier, maybe your company this time is ready to post a couple of things on social, or share some information internally. Perhaps next time, this means you’ll do the work in between big elections so that you’ll be able to step out more, or you’ll be able to advocate for policy changes in your surrounding community, or encourage more volunteerism and so forth. I think it’s shifting the norm. And then also building on that norm to really create a sustained culture of investing in our election system and in voting rights more generally.

Read more: 

• Voters split on economy, health care as election approaches
• The effect of politics on a brand’s reputation
• Culture matters: Employees sound off on the ideal workplace