OfferUp CEO Nick Huzar Despatched This Message to All Workers. This is Why You Ought to Too

Have you asked your employees to vote? Have you given them time off and information on where and how to vote in your region and important deadlines? If you haven’t already done these things, there are compelling reasons why you should be. While you’re at it, you should probably be sending the same message to your customers as well.

I understand that one more attempt at voting might seem like a single big yawn to you. But you may be surprised at how many people have to hear it. At a GeekWire Summit session this week, Nick Huzar, co-founder and CEO of the online marketplace OfferUp, described how he started having an hour-long open discussion with his staff every month. Participants were encouraged to talk about anything they wanted and, as expected, the conversation often turned to politics.

“One thing that really blew me away was the number of people who don’t vote, especially young people,” he said. It’s not that they didn’t care – they had certain political opinions – but many didn’t seem to know how to vote, he said. Huzar wanted to change this, and so the company entered into a partnership with the non-partisan Civic Alliance to offer voting information to all OfferUp employees and to millions of customers via a link in its app. “That way we can encourage people to act by making it easier for them,” he said.

Nobody ever asked.

If you still think this isn’t a big deal, consider this surprising finding from a recent Knight Foundation report on non-voters: Almost half of those who did not vote in the 2016 election gave it claim to have not been asked to vote by anyone – not their parents, teachers, employers, or even a political party. And those who were asked were more likely to do so. 62 percent of respondents who voted in 2016 said someone asked them to. This means that simply asking your employees to vote can be a lot more effective than you think. If you share information about how to vote and, if necessary, give them the time to do so, this request will be substantiated.

And something else. If you yourself are among the millions of people in this nation who have never been asked to vote by anyone, let me change that now. I ask you to vote in the 2020 elections. There has been some controversy over how best to vote this time around. A record number of people are expected to cast their votes due to the pandemic, and some are questioning the validity of the ballot papers sent through the mail. The leaders of both parties encourage people to vote in person or by postal vote, as Florida-based President Donald Trump did. Whichever way you choose to vote, please do so. And then ask everyone else to do the same.

The opinions expressed by Inc.com columnists here are their own, not those of Inc.com.