While early voting and mail-in ballots are common in many locations, tomorrow, November 6, is the real deal: voting day. As an employer, what are your responsibilities to your employees and their right to vote?
Don’t tell your employees how to vote
It’s generally legal to attempt to influence your employees’ votes. Some states have specific rules about employers influencing voters, but most don’t. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Employment attorney Jon Hyman says:
Legal or illegal, however, you need to ask yourself whether holding captive audience meetings to discuss political issues, threatening employees’ jobs or mandating their attendance at political events is a valid business practice. How you answer the question of whether you think it’s okay to try to shape or influence your employees’ votes helps to define the kind of employer you are. Voting is an intensely personal choice. I don’t think it’s my business how my family members cast their votes. I certainly don’t think it’s an employer’s business how its employees cast their votes. Voting booths have privacy curtains for a reason. Exercise some discretion by not invading that privacy of your workers.
To keep reading, click here: Make it Easy for Your Employees to Vote
Try to schedule employees so that half can take the morning off and half can take the afternoon off on Election Day, so that all can have ample time to vote. And, be as flexible as possible if someone calls in and says they’re running late because of voting. The lines are long this year, and it would be terrible if someone had to get out of line, without having voted, in order to make it to work on time.
I like the fact that article emphasizes giving the time for the employees to vote. Again this still comes back to the employee who has multiple options available to utilize to vote. If they choose not to vote, (for whatever reasons they use) work schedule is not the problem. As long as employers aren’t denying the time off, the actual effort to go vote falls on the individual.
We’re as small employer in California and our owner told me prior she was going to send out an email blast re: Prop 6. Not to tell employees how to vote, but to explain Prop 6 to them because “it is so confusing”. Subject line on the email: YES ON PROP 6 …thought you weren’t going to tell us how to vote!@#