Patagonia gives employees PTO to vote—and wants others to do the same

Some civic duties, like paying taxes or serving jury duty, can feel like a chore. Outdoor retailer Patagonia doesn’t want its employees to feel that way about voting, so it’s trying to make it easier for them to participate in the democratic process.

The Ventura, California-based company has, since 2016, closed its 70 stores and paused its business operations in the US on general and midterm election days so its nearly 2,200 employees can vote, according to J.J. Huggins, PR and communications manager at Patagonia, who is also a project manager for Time to Vote, a program Patagonia launched in 2018 to help employees cast their ballot.

“We decided to close [in 2016] on election day, give everyone a paid day off and let all the employees know that nothing was more important than voting on election day,” Huggins told HR Brew. “Simultaneously, we sent the signal to our customers, letting them know that we believe nothing is more important than voting in this election and that shopping could wait a day.”

Sending a message. Environmentalism and justice are central to the company’s mission, so Huggins said employees have been encouraged to vote “with the planet in mind,” since 2004. But in the lead up to the divisive 2016 presidential election, he said “leadership put their money where their mouth is” and started providing PTO to vote.

“By doing that, we’re telling the employees that we not only care about them as someone who contributes to the company, but we can care about them as someone who contributes to society, and we’re backing that up with the paid time to do it,” he said.

Sloan Richardson, a general manager at an Atlanta store, who has worked at Patagonia for 18 years, said the company has always prioritized getting employees to vote.

“It’s baked into the culture of Patagonia, which is activism, and because it’s not always just about voting, it's about being part of the community,” Richardson told HR Brew. “It’s not just a job, it’s about the mission. Which, we’re in business to save our whole planet and everything that goes with that.”

Spreading the word. In 2018, Huggins said Patagonia wanted to do more to help people exercise their right to vote. So it teamed up with Levi’s and PayPal to start Time to Vote, through which US companies can publicly pledge to help their employees vote.

“The only call to action for Time to Vote was that companies who joined it commit to providing time to vote for their employees in elections. We didn’t tell them how much time they had to provide…It’s just, ‘Give your folks time off to go vote,’” he said. In the first year, he said, 400 companies signed the pledge. Today, over 2,000 companies have signed, including other big retailers like Best Buy, Barnes & Noble Education, and Kohl’s.

Election 2024. Patagonia is approaching PTO to vote a little differently this year. Instead of suspending its business operations on November 5, Huggins said Patagonia will be closing its doors on October 29, or Vote Early Day.

Richardson is happy about the move. By closing his store for early voting, he said it will make it easier for him and his employees to volunteer as poll workers on election day. “It goes to the core for me,” he said. “It becomes super important to people. It’s just a way to put our love of the environment into action.”

At the end of the day, said Huggins, that’s the company’s goal: to make the process even easier.

“It’s non-partisan. It’s just simply supporting employees at the end of the day and supporting our country, because if we get more people out to vote, our democracy will function better,” Huggins said. “Supporting your employees to do their civic duty is table stakes these days. That’s just a basic service we can provide to the people who work for us.”