The communicator’s guide to talking about the midterm elections

Midterm election season puts internal communicators in a tough spot. If they say too much about politics, the organization risks alienating part of its workforce. If they say too little, employees may wonder whether leadership is paying attention.

Kristie Vainikos Stegen, chief brand and communications officer at Cotality, told Ragan that employees’ expectations from their organizations are usually more specific and nuanced than a choice between speaking up and staying silent.

“I don’t think employees have an expectation that their leadership teams or the company are going to put their name on a lot of political views, nor do I think they want that,” she said. “But what I do think they want is for their companies to be vocal on issues of import to their business. If you’re going to talk about something in the zeitgeist, it needs to be germane to the broader conversations you’d be engaging in outside of that subject matter.”

That sort of a standard puts a lot of emphasis and importance on communicators’ judgment. Plenty of political issues affect an organization at its edges, and it’s up to a comms pro to be able to sort through them and know when to formulate a message.

“A communicator has a responsibility to deeply understand the business, first and foremost,” Vainikos Stegen said. “That way, they can do their best to advise on which subjects their leadership and the company should be talking about.”

It’s key to remember that internal communicators are writing for a workforce that holds a wide range of political views. Some employees will welcome the results and others won’t, but the organization’s message has to work for everyone.

“Staying factual and not taking a side is often the right way,” Vainikos Stegen said. “Taking the side of what’s best for the business and its employees is super important. If you have strongly established values and a very clear mission, and you can tie everything you say back to that, it’s much easier to talk about things in an unemotional and unbiased way.”

During Ragan’s Future of Communications Conference next month, Vainikos Stegen will discuss how communicators can approach employee communications during midterm season and its immediate aftermath. To register, click here.

Weigh the impact on employees instead of the politics themselves

Not every political issue or theme of midterm season requires a message for employees. To determine which ones do and which ones don’t, Vainikos Stegen borrows a tool from another part of the job.

“Just like crisis situations, a communicator should have a bit of a decision tree they use to decide, ‘Do I talk about this or not?’” she said. “Is there an impact? What are we going to say? Those are the moments where you go, ‘OK, what’s the right way for me to handle this?’”

In addition, communicators need to know that many political issues will reach employees well before the organization can say anything.

“That same logic and discipline would apply to any sort of situation,” Vainikos Stegen said. “Say you’re in the food industry, and there’s been a rollback in the number of inspectors. You’ve started to see more recalls, and there’s speculation in the news about whether fewer inspections are to blame. There isn’t a cookie-cutter approach, just like there isn’t a cookie-cutter way to approach a crisis.”

Don’t wait for Election Day

Vainikos Stegen recommends that communicators create a plan to handle internal messaging when Election Day does roll around.

“It’s good to put together a bit of a guidebook for yourself to say, ‘OK, depending on the outcomes, how might this impact our business?’” Vainikos Stegen said. “Then you can start to game out your messaging, depending on which way it goes, so you don’t find yourself caught unprepared.”

Vainikos Stegen added that managers also need to be involved in any election comms plan because they’re often the first people employees turn to with pressing questions.

“You have to really engage the management in your organization as a distinct audience,” she said. “If there’s something new we’re going to be talking to employees about, we always have a conversation with managers first. We have something called the Manager Minute. Every week we send a newsletter that’s about a minute-ish to read, with talking points and toolkits to help them have the conversations they need to have.”

Sean Devlin is the senior internal communications editor at Ragan. You can follow him on LinkedIn here.