The most important thing for companies to do is lay out a clear policy on speech, says Alison Taylor, a clinical professor in the Business and Society Program at NYU Stern School of Business, who says she’s watching in horror as the Kirk comments are reported and the dismissals play out.
“It should be clear to anybody working in your company what you can and can’t say online, and what your code of conduct is,” Taylor says. (And the policy should be easy to find, not something hiding deep within a company’s online handbook.) “If you are firing people on the basis of these comments and you haven’t put out that guidance, I don’t think you can get away with that.”
In most private workplaces, speech is not protected unless there is some legal principle that otherwise would shield employees from retribution, Segal said. (One example is a whistleblower comment about an employer’s conduct.) That doesn’t seem to be the case with the statements people are making about Kirk, he added.
That’s the larger question that Taylor says has become “incredibly difficult” in recent years. “A company may have broad, consistent principles that would apply to, let’s say, expressing racist hate speech online, and also apply to celebrating a murder,” she says, “And I can understand that both those things shouldn’t be allowed, but the problem that we really mustn’t get into is inconsistency.”
Taylor, who also works as a consultant with large global companies, reports that one firm she is working with previously encouraged employee activism and took strong stands on Russia and Ukraine, as well as domestic movements such as Black Lives Matter. Now, some companies that previously went out on a limb are regretting it, she says. Worse, some have swung to the opposite extreme, taking draconian stands on employee communications.
“Regardless of what you think about Charlie Kirk, Israel, or DEI,” says Taylor, “it’s a terrible idea to look as if you shift in the breeze depending on who’s in power. That was a terrible idea in 2020 and it’s still a terrible idea in 2025.”
Still other business leaders who have refrained from switching positions have instead gone quiet, “afraid to stick their necks out at the moment on this question,” says Taylor. “So the general impression ends up being a little imbalanced.”
The bottom line: “This is a perfect moment to get principles in place and have an organizational-wide discussion.”
Create guidelines, not hard rules. To avoid the grey areas of policing political commentary outside work, companies can create policies that simply ask employees to pause before posting instead, says Segal. He suggested: “What you say may be seen as speaking for the company; please think twice before engaging in social media of a political nature.” Employees should also be reminded that posting a positive message about a political or controversial figure may also suggest that you endorse those persons’ views.
Never take sides. Employers should be apolitical in when it comes to enforcing rules, says Segal. “If an employer is going to condemn and potentially terminate an employee for celebrating the murder or attempted murder of someone, they should do that whether the person’s on the left or the right,” he says. “That may not always go to legality, but that will always go to cultural credibility.”
Consider warnings or suspensions before terminations: Many of this week’s firings over Charlie Kirk have reportedly happened swiftly, without investigations or even conversations. But before terminating someone, an employer should consider taking less drastic action while sorting through the issues, says Taylor. “It’s a little bit like sexual harassment,” she says. “As soon as there’s an allegation and you say there’s zero tolerance, then you’ve kind of got a very blunt instrument—for a very complicated topic.”
