The current political environment has put new pressures on leaders to respond to stress in the workplace, according to a new report.

From Uncertainty to Resilience: A Leader’s Wellbeing Guide for Navigating Political Transition, was released last month by Workplace Options, an office wellness services provider. According to the report’s author, Oliver Brecht, the company’s vice president and general manager of enterprise solutions, the study was informed by sizable political shifts in the United States and around the world.

“Just over half the population of the world voted in 2024,” he said, “and from that we saw about a third of incumbent governments being removed from power. So we knew that there would be uncertainty and stress, and there was a need to help leaders understand how they could support their employees to manage these periods of uncertainty.”

The report recommends that leaders become more attentive to anxiety that their staffs may be facing, and do more to model the kind of vulnerability that can help their people feel safer. “Employees must feel secure enough to voice concerns, share challenges, and ask for help,” the report says. “Leaders can make this possible by demonstrating openness about their own struggles with uncertainty.”

“Part of learning is to make mistakes, so creating a safe environment for employees is about creating an opportunity for them to feel like it’s okay to learn,” Brecht says. “Leaders want to ensure that you’ve got an environment where employees are able to feel like they can learn, feel like they can take the risks required to learn to be themselves—recognize that it’s still safe to be themselves at work, given some of the changes or the changes that are coming, recognize whether it’s safe for them to contribute or challenge the workplace as well.”

In addition to honing practices around listening to and sharing concerns, the report says, organizations should develop (or bolster) policies and procedures around hot-button behaviors in the office, from political speech to bullying and harassment, and offer clear guidelines around actions that employees with concerns can take. “If your employer has such policies, they will reflect your organization’s commitment to a range of priorities, such as diversity, openness, transparency, and mutual respect,” the report says. “They will also be grounded in laws and regulations related to free speech and the rights of workers to organize.”

Organizations that develop those policies tend to run more smoothly, Brecht says. “Organizations that are able to put that level of foundation into the DNA always tend to have a higher level of well-being and a higher level of employee engagement,” he said. “Without having the foundation of the policies and procedures or job design that is focused to be implementable and impactful for your industry and organization, you’re never going to be able to have a sustainable level of employee engagement and well-being. But it is also critical that you then trickle that down through the organization by your senior leaders, your people leaders, and then your frontline staff.”

In the year ahead, Brecht said, Workplace Options will be conducting surveys on the potential consequences of the current political shifts. “We’ll be looking to see if things such as interpersonal conflict arise, if things such as job security and job safety arise as a presenting issue, and then also if challenges around bullying and harassment arise as well.”