More Companies are Leaning into Civic Engagement
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Workplaces now play a meaningful role in how people navigate civic life.
Workplaces are playing a bigger role in civic life than they did even a few years ago. During the 2024 and 2025 elections, employees began looking to their employers for clarity in a moment when other institutions felt less stable and less trusted. At the In Good Company Institute, we’ve found that when employees have a reliable place to turn for simple, factual information, the workplace feels calmer, and the organization becomes stronger in the process.
Workplace Civic Engagement Is Becoming a Standard Practice
The 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer highlights a clear trend: people trust their employers more than they trust government or the media, a pattern that has remained steady across multiple election cycles and grown even stronger after the 2024 and 2025 elections. HR Daily Advisor adds helpful context, noting that only about 40 percent of Americans trust government institutions, a little more than 50 percent trust business overall, and nearly 79 percent of people around the world say they trust their own employer.
Together, these findings suggest that employees increasingly view the workplace as one of the most reliable places to find straightforward, factual information in a world where other institutions feel polarized or unstable.
Civic Engagement Supports Existing Business Goals
Integrating nonpartisan civic engagement into broader corporate citizenship efforts now aligns directly with business outcomes leaders already track. Research from our partners at Civic Alliance points to several benefits:
higher employee engagement and a stronger sense of purpose
deeper customer loyalty and brand affinity
positive effects on employee well-being and community relationships.
These findings align with long-standing evidence that stable, trusted democratic institutions support predictable policy environments and economic growth. From that perspective, civic engagement becomes part of risk management and long-term value creation rather than a side project disconnected from core strategy.
Expectations Are Shifting Inside Workplaces
Employee expectations have evolved quickly. Glassdoor polling shows that about 61 percent of U.S. workers reported talking about politics at work in the past year. Edelman finds that roughly 62 percent of respondents believe CEOs should respond to social changes in some meaningful way. HR reporting adds that employees continue these conversations whether employers acknowledge elections or not. With that backdrop, communicators increasingly argue that ignoring elections entirely now creates its own reputational and cultural risks.
Employees are already talking. The question for leaders is whether those conversations happen in a vacuum or with a set of shared guardrails that keep the atmosphere calm, respectful, and grounded in facts.
Corporate Civic Responsibility Has Moved From “Nice to Have” to Expected
Across recent cycles, many employers have shifted from passive observers to active, nonpartisan participants in civic life. One clear example is the growth of Time To Vote, a nonpartisan initiative launched in 2018 by Patagonia, PayPal, and Levi Strauss to make sure work schedules do not become barriers to participation. The effort encourages employers to offer paid time off to vote, set meeting-free Election Days, and share simple, accurate information on early voting and mail voting options.
By the 2024 election cycle, more than 2,000 companies had joined Time To Vote, according to reporting from Fast Company, including large brands such as Aflac, Dell, Google, and Coca-Cola, as well as many smaller firms and startups.
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