Customize Our Election Email for Your Team
As a follow-up to our July article, Workplaces Don’t Exist in a Vacuum: A Call to Action for Proactive Leaders this Election Season, we’re sharing our recommendations for two-part crisis response plans, along with a customizable sample email you can use in the upcoming days—both before and after Election Day.
Leaders must communicate—and keep communicating—about the election and the uncertainty surrounding it. Acknowledge that employees are likely stressed or scared about what comes next.
Through our collective 30+ years of leadership and consulting experience, we’ve found that organizations face two major barriers in creating proactive, equity-centered, and trauma-informed response plans:
Helping managers gain the awareness and skills to provide everyday, concrete support to their direct reports
Indecision, misalignment, or lack of cultural-competence (usually among senior leadership) in deploying formalized responses
When addressing the former, we deeply appreciate this resource from Michelle MiJung Kim, How to Manage Your Team in Times of Political Trauma. It’s one worth pinning and rereading as needed. You might also check out What Employees Want Most in Uncertain Times.
No event is too small for supervisors to create space for acknowledgment and support, either in one-on-one interactions or small group settings. Acknowledgment and support can keep this critical component of a supervisor’s role top of mind and help gauge when a topic needs escalation to a formalized response plan.
When the impact of the event(s) may warrant a formalized response, like the upcoming election, what systems do you have in place to help you decide on your course of action? While there are many nuances to determining when and how to respond, the following sample framework can support you in making thoughtful and swift decisions on these matters.
For example, “We make a public and/or employee-facing statement if the answer is yes to three or more of the following:”
Is it about members of our local community?
Does the event undermine aspects of our mission statement?
Relatedly, does it matter to the majority of our staff and/or customers? How do we know?
Would a formalized statement move us closer to embodying one or more of our values?
If we don’t act, will we look back 1-5 years from now and know that the decision was made to protect the comfort of those holding dominant identities?
Use this sample to create a framework relevant to your organization’s mission and values, so you can take a proactive approach to crises down the line. This helps your evolution to becoming a more responsive, healing-centered, trauma-informed workplace.
Check out our recent LinkedIn Live conversation on the same topic.
To further support those with what to say or how to say it in real-time with the election just days away, we’re offering a sample email template that may be customized for your specific organization. We recommend that this email come from the most senior person in your organization who is willing and able to send it. As always, ensure the tone always feels authentic to the sender.
In community,
Viva and Michael
Co-Founders, Liberation Labs
Hi all,
On November 5, we’re facing another election season rife with challenges and harmful rhetoric. And yet, we still need to find ways to move forward. As a leadership team, we know that the upcoming week may be particularly difficult, made harder for some based on our identities and traumas. We acknowledge that there is no one-size-fits-all message in situations like these, as the rights of our BIPOC and LGBTQ+ colleagues, alongside those who face oppression globally, are most at risk. We ask you to be thoughtful about election stress as you schedule internal and external meetings next week.
Our needs and preferences will vary in the days to come, and in service of our values, we honor the myriad ways people need to cope and find support. Here are some tools you might use:
Space: Know that you have the option to cancel or reschedule any meetings that aren't critical on the day of and days following the election (people managers, please be mindful of what is truly urgent given the impact of this situation, and collective trauma to marginalized folks specifically
Mental Health: Know where to find resources about election stress, general mental health, and those specific to people of color and LGBTQ+ people
Dialogue: Dedicated + appropriate spaces for processing and healing hosted by companies like Modern Health (including ones based on identity groups)
Connect: Please reach out to a trusted colleague and/or your manager if you need support beyond what is listed here
Safety protocols (based on location): X
Additionally, here's what we’re sharing with our clients/customers (if applicable):
ABC
XYZ
123
Please reach out if you have any questions or concerns.
In community,
xxx
