Bring your whole self to work

Great thread and brilliant responses.
The only advantage of this if it is enforced on you is that it gives you a clear warning of who to avoid in the workplace - the emotionally incontinent, the manipulators, those trying to impose their niche ideology on everyone else, the guilt trippers etc.

The rest of us just getting on with our work - that's where our allies are!

I loathe it. It panders to the navel gazers. I don't want you to bring your whole self to work , just bring the part that will do the work please, without the woke bullshit. Thank you very much.

It's grim isn't it. I worked somewhere like this and when I had a massive melt down and cried for four hours they were not at all warm and fuzzy and comforting. If they hadn't had all this mental health bullcrap I would have stayed home that day.

Well that policy will change if everyone brought their children to work during school holidays 😆. Employees should do this en mass

They'll totally regret that when I turn up..🤣

They wouldn't like it if I brought my whole self to work. I have to deliberately leave my best and funniest self at home because there are not many at work that would appreciate it.

Definitely not unreasonable.

A friend of mine had a mini film made about them by their company, celebrating their particular protected characteristic and speaking about progress and how great an employer the multinational company was.

A month or so after that they were made redundant.

Multinational company couldn't actually give a shit about any difficulty said friend might have experienced in life. They just wanted to milk their experience for some woke brownie points / points on the Stonewall scheme, and then dispose of them once they were no longer useful.

I agree with someone who posted upthread that this BS peaked in 2020/21, along with declaring your pronouns. It was forced on me when I worked for a Big4 company and I hated it.
I am only willing to bring a highly sanitised version of myself to work. I have strong opinions on all sorts of things that wouldn't be acceptable in the modern workplace (see above and 'pronouns'!) so I keep them to myself.

fuck that shit. I bring the bit of me that gets paid to do my job to work.

Yep had this before and also the nasty redundancy process including making the only female of that team who was due on mat leave in 4 weeks time been made redundant knowing she didn't have the money to take them to tribunal (it was when you still had to pay).

Before this I did believe the "work family" ethos they spouted. I started job hunting the next day and was clear in my exit interview about my reasons.

I now work in a brilliant team, we do look out for each other but also respect each other as professionals and although some bits csn be frustrating I don't see me wanting to leave anytime soon.

My workplace was like this. They were ever so inclusive - until i got diagnosed with AuDHD and, emboldened by the "bring your whole self" ethos, i decided to ask for some reasonable adjustments.

Which took a year and 2 grievances to be implemented. All i wanted was a wireless headset and an extra monitor.

I guess they didn't really want my whole self there?

Your “whole self” does not belong in the workplace x

It's meaningless virtue signalling. It's just to pretend that they are kind and thoughtful to either get you to work harder or tempt new people to join. See also most forms of 'women's initiatives'.

I take my happy, bubbly, capable self to work! I started in this position absolutely terrified after a decade plus out of the workplace due to disability, and the only way I got through day one was to put a mask on. I do share bits and pieces with colleagues now, and I don’t think I’m inauthentic, but my whole self can stay home in her dressing gown!

Yes, yes yes!

There are a lot of people whose “whole selves” I would rather not be around and they definitely don’t want me.

I wonder if it is to do with diversity because many gay and trans people might feel like they have to hide themselves in the workplace?

I find it to be an exercise in ammunition gathering and we all know how ammunition is used!

This.

Plus, my boss has been crystal clear to us all that she is not qualified to deal with all our emotional and personal shit and we’d be better off talking to our mates about all that, not her.

And my ‘whole self’ is a bored work shy fopp who thinks 95% of what we do is a pointless waste of time and our entire team could be made redundant with no impact on our organisation whatsoever. So I don’t think I should take my ‘whole self’ to work. 😃

Oh yes. I've just left an organisation where they liked to say this.

In truth, there were only certain "whole selves" they really wanted to see (mainly the ones that hit their diversity targets).

It's absolute nonsense anyway, it promotes unprofessionalism.

I think it depends on your profession.

I'm a teacher and if I didn't have colleagues who had my back, the job would be a hell of a lot harder than it already is. We have to be able to confide in each other and be honest with each other about what is going on for us outside of work, because otherwise we're putting on a front not just in front of our classes, but also in front of our colleagues, and that would be absolutely exhausting. I love the fact that I have been able to come into work after a weekend break up, a bereavement or other personal life crisis and know I could tell my colleagues and have their support if I was feeling wobbly and didn't know if I could manage to hold it together in front of the kids. In our line of work, we need to be able to look out for each other. A colleague slipping into your classroom with a cup of tea and a biscuit because they know you've had a shit morning, or offering to cover your class while you go and have a cry in the toilets and sort yourself out because you've just had some bad news, makes such a difference. I love my colleagues - we're very much in the trenches together, and they're my friends outside of work as well as in. I think in some professions you do develop much closer bonds with your colleagues than in others and that will change your perspective on professional and personal boundaries.

However, when I worked in an office prior to becoming a teacher, I hated all the bollocks that HR trotted out, because it was performative. They didn't really care about us - they just wanted to be seen to care. Mental health first aiders were the worst. I couldn't imagine going to speak to any of them - all terrible gossips - often very young with zero life experience, all very middle class, and having had no actual meaningful training - therefore in no position to give any legitimate help or support to anyone. I think when you don't work as closely with your colleagues and have no relationship with many of them, the expectation to share personal things or to have to listen to and be involved in other people's personal life dramas or fundraising initiatives or forced to 'identify' as particular things can become intrusive and unnecessary, especially when it's got nothing to do with the work you're doing together. There has to be a respectful boundary between personal and professional. As another poster said - it's about balance.

Oh hell we have this rubbish too. Nope not happening as far as I am concerned.

I have bosses like this. They pretend they care and want you to talk about you to ‘team bond’ ‘trust each other ‘ ‘collaborate’ etc. bollocks. They will use it against you if need be ….and notice how they never tell you anything about them?

I think there is a time and place but some of this stuff just blurs boundaries and means people use their line managers and team as an emotional crutch. I was in an organisation a bit like this and it is much easier being somewhere that is less ‘bring everything to work’ and is more ‘be kind and supportive’ where appropriate. I felt like I was being asked to act like a mental health professional with no training at my last job.

plus i tried to build what i thought was a good friendship and even asked permission etc for different requests and it still went south, sometimes even when you do it by the book you still lose

At work, I'm supposed to be working. I'm not there to make friends or to offload my problems. I absolutely do not want my privacy invaded. My "whole self" needs to be kept as far away from work as possible!

’Mental health first aiders’ is actually really offensive to mental health and to first aiders. Someone in my workplace with no skills or training or expertise, and no time to talk, and no duty of confidentiality, to apparently be an ‘emergency service’ for me to confide on in and to console me at work. No way