Bosses Are Policing Speech at a New Level After Kirk’s Killing

(Bloomberg Opinion) — In the post-pandemic era, CEOs have been trying to put an end to the bring-your-whole-self-to-work experiment. No water cooler chitchat about the war in Gaza, please. Cool it on the Slacks about vaccines and immigration. The result? A return to old-school norms of office etiquette: Save your personal views for your personal life.

In the aftermath of the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, bosses are taking it a step further. They’re making it clear they want more of a say in how workers express their personal views out of the office, too. At companies including Delta Air Lines Inc., United Airlines Holdings Inc., American Airlines Group Inc., Perkins Coie, Nasdaq Inc. and the Carolina Panthers, rank-and-file employees have been suspended or fired for their social media posts about Kirk’s murder.

In one sense, this is nothing new. Employers have been firing people for their social media posts for as long as social media has existed. But we’ve never before seen a campaign of this scale and ferocity, designed to expose and oust people for what they post on their personal accounts. And especially not one that’s encouraged by the US government: “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out. And, hell, call their employer,” Vice President JD Vance said while hosting Kirk’s podcast earlier this week.

The pressure puts employers in a difficult spot. But caving to it won’t make things any easier.    

If this trend continues, companies risk morphing into content moderators — a job that comes with immense challenges. “It’s hard for a social media company like BlueSky or Facebook,” says Laszlo Bock, a CEO coach and Google’s one-time HR chief. “It’s going to be impossible for regular companies.” The first problem is the sheer volume of content that organizations must sift through if they want to apply the rules fairly. Then they’ll have to figure out how to handle all the grey zones. As any social media platform would tell you, these are difficult tasks to accomplish without immense resources, not to mention the accusations of bias that are sure to follow.  

A less invasive first step for management teams is to take this moment to remind employees of the company’s social media policies. I guarantee most employees either don’t know they exist, or don’t know what they are. If you’re suspending employees for posts that your CEO says “went well beyond healthy, respectful debate,” as Delta did, have you made clear to workers where that line is? If an employer fires someone for posts that run counter to its values, do employees know what those values are? “Companies need to get their ducks in a row with a set of principles and guidance that is not a Kirk-specific reaction,” says Alison Taylor, a New York University business school professor and author of Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World. 

Consistency is key to avoiding accusations of playing politics. The line of what’s considered acceptable social media behavior should not shift to placate the current administration — a phenomenon Bock described to me as a “perverse kind of virtue signaling.” A company that didn’t fire employees for distasteful posts about the murder of Minnesota state Representative Melissa Hortman should not be firing employees for the same kind of rhetoric about Kirk. If your company is doing that, its policy effectively becomes “we only take action when the mob comes for us.”

One reason some Kirk supporters have resorted to pressuring companies to terminate employees? They don’t have much other recourse. While some of the posts in question are in poor taste and even vile, they are not illegal. Attorney General Pam Bondi seemed to make that concession on Fox News: “It’s free speech, but you shouldn’t be employed anywhere if you’re going to say that,” she said, adding that employers “need to look at people who are saying horrible things. And they shouldn’t be working with you.”

This approach is going to continue because it’s proven to be so effective. Last night, those tactics got Jimmy Kimmel’s show taken off the air — a decision that reportedly went all the way to the top of the org chart at Walt Disney Co. to CEO Bob Iger and Dana Walden, who heads the company’s television division.

Whether you agree with Disney’s decision or not — and I don’t — there is a distinction between Kimmel and the rank-and-file employees at non-media companies who have lost their jobs. Kimmel’s job is talking politics. The others were posting their opinions on their personal social media accounts. But in all cases the result will be the same, and counter to what employers are trying to achieve: more fodder for employee chatter at the water cooler — and on their social media accounts.More Bloomberg Opinion:

This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Beth Kowitt is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering corporate America. She was previously a senior writer and editor at Fortune Magazine.

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