A recent survey from Betterworks, a performance technology firm, shows contentious political chatter in the office is as big a distraction today as before Donald J. Trump became President. So reports Time.

Surveys on the lead up to the presidential contest showed that human resources had to deal with workplace tension, as PHRMpreviously reported. The first action HR teams need to take is for management and employees to recognize potential issues and their role in fueling tensions. 

“Acknowledge that it is a distraction,” said BetterWorks CEO Kris Duggan. That means for staff to be aware of their own temptation to engage in political banter in the break room or online. Then ask if you engage in those discussions and stop if you see yourself potentially poisoning your relationship with colleagues. 

Duggan saw how after the election politics became the dominant discussion topic at his own firm and on Facebook, with workers sharing photos of their attendance at rallies and “polarizing news articles in place of endearing and relaxing cat GIFs.”

“I was worried that this environment might be affecting employee focus and productivity,” Duggan wrote on his firm’s site. So Duggan did his own informal polling of employees and managers. Then he decided to commission a survey with Wakefield Research to measure how much politics was impacting productivity in general. The survey polled 500 full-time U.S. employees.  

“Turns out, workers aren’t just reading and talking about politics,” Duggan wrote. “They’re actually feeling distracted from their work, and dedicate much of their time (both at work and at home) to thinking about and processing the current political situation.”

The survey found 87% of employees are scouring social media for political posts during the work day. Employees were reading an average 14 political posts a day, with millennials reading an average of 18. Twenty-one percent say they read 20 or more posts daily. In terms of productivity, that works out to an average of two hours every day. 

The survey also found that 73% have talked politics with their colleagues since the election and 37% have had these discussions with their managers. Potentially disturbing is that about 50% of people said they saw political talk devolve into arguments in the office.

That number was even higher for millennials, 63%. Just under 30% “of workers say they are less productive since the election, and that number increases to 35% among those who read 10 or more political social media posts per work day,” the survey found. And “20% of the U.S. workforce (and 34% of millennials) say they’ve participated in a rally or march since the election,” according to the survey.

Employees can give themselves strict time limits, such as 10 minutes a day, to get their fill of social media during working hours, Duggan told Time. If its gets to be too much, simply excusing yourself from a political discussion or saying you have to attend to a deadline may be the way to go. Companies also may want to be proactive in redirecting their employees’ passions.

“I have seen more companies using community service activities as an avenue to direct emotions toward positive, non-political goals,” said Jim Strain, human resources director at DKS Associates and a member of the Society for Human Resource Management’s HR disciplines panel. HR can take the lead in setting up events, including a blood drive or helping at a food bank or park cleanup.   

“These activities allow employees to contribute in tangible ways to their communities while also building a sense of teamwork and company support,” Strain said.

But Duggan tells TheAtlantic  that it is not realistic for HR to create a so-called politics-free zone at work. “I don't think you can say we're going to turn off Facebook, we're going to turn off social media… it's a tight balance between letting people have a voice and being too tight on the workforce,” he said. “It's definitely an issue leaders should be thinking about right now.”