To think employers wanting us to bring our whole selves to work is actually a very sinister idea?

[ScreamingBeans]

No. I don't want to bring my whole self to work and I don't want my colleagues to either.

The man who worked at the NSPCC who brought his whole self to work by wearing his leather fetish gear and masturbating in the toilet and then uploading it to a website, should have left that part of himself at home. I hope that any colleagues of mine who share his habits will not accept my employer's invitation to bring their whole selves to work, I want them to leave that bit of themselves firmly behind their own front doors.

The sinister bit is that if you want people to bring their whole selves to work, then that means you need to employ people who think and act in a way that you as an employer find conducive. So you won't employ anyone who disagrees with you politically, religiously or philosophically, because their opinions won't align with your values. And you will then be justified in doing something which trade unionists fought tooth and nail to make illegal - blacklist workers who don't share your politics and viewpoint.

I don't care what people do or believe outside work as long as they do the bloody job competently and professionally in work and keep their unacceptable beliefs or behaviour to themselves. I don't want interviews and other employment processes to start becoming tools to weed out people with the wrong political views - now called "values" - instead of the tools to find the best person for the job regardless of their sex, race, religion, disability status, political beliefs etc.

Employers are beginning to take back the rights they used to have, to blacklist workers with unacceptable political or ideological views and it's being done under the guise of employing the sort of people who have "our values" IE the same opinions as the employer.

Shouldn't trades unionists be alarmed about this?

Presumably you only have one employer. So you have a sample size of one. Maybe that's why you haven't come across it in real life? Try googling all the major multinational companies. Most of them have pages on their websites where they advertise these policies.

@Pollyputhekettleon I hope the people you disparage in your post as currently being the "victims" en vogue don't have the gross misfortune of having you as a colleague or even worse a manager.

But I’m sure the majority of people work at small or medium businesses. MN just had an unusually high concentration of people working either in the public sector or in huge corporates. It’s unusual for millions of people.

@tectonicplates It spreads downwards. It's becoming increasingly common and will continue so. Anyway, my point was not that the majority of people deal with this at work. Simply that if one individual hasn't come across it in their life, that tells you almost nothing about how common it is.

@DojaPhat I was disparaging people like you actually. But as a member of a designated Victim group, thank you so much for fighting the good fight for me against myself. Whatever would we do without our saviours.

@Pollyputhekettleon You're welcome

You could have just said, "No I'm not going to talk about my upbringing here." I would (and have!) said this in these ridiculously forced group situations!

But no one should have to do that at work @SpringIntoChaos. No one should be asked by their employer to discuss their personal life with other employees in the first place. You're right that people need to stand up to it when they can, but the people most affected by it are often also those least able to do so. People risk being disciplined, viewed with suspicion by their coworkers, or overlooked for promotion if they're seen as being uncooperative during these little involuntary group therapy sessions.

Absolutely @Pollyputhekettleon !! It's outrageous that management think this woke nonsense is acceptable...but it is happening and we need to stop it! I agree that not everyone is able to stand up for themselves and say no, but those of us who are, should 100% do so, in order to start the bandwagon of 'this is really crap and I'm absolutely not going to be part of it!'

Hopefully once one person has voiced this, others will feel enabled to join in and do the same.

My private life is my private life and my work life is my work life, the two will never meet.
Anyone asking me about any aspect of my life outside work gets told where to go.

If everyone could get with this reality, there would be far fewer work place martyrs and workaholics.
That's a good point.
I also think that the blurring of boundaries between work selves and non-work selves creates a culture where it's easy for additional unpaid hours to thrive because it fosters a sense of obligation or awkwardness because it's not always clear what's personal and what's professional.

I've always been my authentic work self at work, as in the version of me at work is true but it is a fraction of my person as a whole.
How much I bring to work has reduced as a result of people blurring boundaries. I've been bitten too many times so now I bring very little of my non-work self to work. Small talk about hobbies or holidays are fine, but anything else doesn't cross the door.

@SpringIntoChaos Agreed. I say what I think because I know others are more easily intimidated, more junior, and less secure in the job. If trade unions weren't on the side of management on this, we wouldn't be reduced to individual actions though. This kind of insanity is one of the things a modern trade union that was actually interested in helping its members would do.

@SpringIntoChaos of course I could have done that and no doubt at other times in my life, when feeling more secure in my position I would have done. But the context was a hurriedly-conducted restructure in which members of my team had been made redundant, my line manager had been moved onto another role and the person organising the event - and task - was my new line manager, who I barely knew, and who was 3 full grades senior to me. I wasn't feeling at my most able to push back. And isn't that part of the reason why this 'whole self to work' idea has the potential to be so toxic?

Someone earlier talked about the boundaries between work and personal being broken down and I think that's a lot of my discomfort with this whole thing. I can't help feeling like we're being encouraged to give employers really useful data about ourselves, which they can then use against us if need be. Much like we give our personal data to Facebook who then use it to sell us shit.

Mark Zuckerberg is not my friend. Nor is my employer. Both of them have a really vested interest in knowing as much about me as possible, but it's not in my interest that they do so.

I really dislike it, and particularly I hate that employers make a big song and dance about it being something they are doing for the benefit of employees when actually it's all a big Business Development ploy. I see a lot of the tenders we apply for at our company, Govt and large corporation tenders are more and more frequently asking for DEI stats as part of the bid process.

• Gender (never listed as sex), race, sexuality, ethnicity composition of Board and Exec, The senior management layer and at a whole business level:
• % women who "identify as" for each ethnicity group
• % women who "identify as" disabled
• % men who identify as ....
• % non-binary who identify as.......
• % Prefer not to say who identify as .......

Contractual obligations from clients to source suppliers who classify under the U.K. Govt definition as "Diverse" ie SMEs owned by people who are Women, disabled, LGBTQ+....... and to report on the percentage of suppliers who are "Diverse".

None of them have targets attached, just reporting obligations, so companies need to source and store the information (GDPR risks abound here what with it all being sensitive information) but not to improve it. They need to find ways to get staff and suppliers to give them this kind of sensitive information so they can use it to win business.

The man who worked at the NSPCC who brought his whole self to work by wearing his leather fetish gear and masturbating in the toilet and then uploading it to a website, should have left that part of himself at home.

Um, yeah, I'm not sure that's exactly what they had in mind. 😂

@FatAgainItsLettuceTime That's exactly the root of it. This is a top down, state-large corporate combined effort, it's totalitarianism and there is no real political opposition. And it absolutely is being done in the name of specific group of people who are defined in modern leftist ideology as being 'Victims'. And the activist class who claim to speak on their behalf of course are the ones who get the greatest benefit from this little Rescue Game with lucrative jobs and contracts for conducting the re-education camps and struggle sessions.

This makes it very difficult for people to oppose it, because if you do, not only do you risk your job, but woke scum are triggered to start robot-shrieking at you that you must hate black people/whoever, as demonstrated right on this thread. And many people are extremely easy to manipulate through guilt and social shame.

Someone earlier talked about the boundaries between work and personal being broken down and I think that's a lot of my discomfort with this whole thing.

Only if you tell the truth. Just make shit up. After all, what they gonna do ? Because I look forward to the disciplinary based on some rule in the guidebook that you have to tell the truth to every question asked.

I remember now I used to do this at school - over 50 years ago. We'd troop in Monday and the teacher would ask us what we did at the weekend. For some reason no one told me it had to be what we really did. So I made. Shit. Up. I do recall owning a horse at one point. Which tells you "Black Beauty" was on TV at the time.

Bringing your whole self to work is about authentic communication. It’s not a permission slip to let you behave the same way as you would at home. For example many women are confident at home but at work there are often structures put up to ensure only quiet, meek, supportive women get promoted. Alternatively you also have people who shout and swear at work when they’d never dare to do that at home. Authentic communication strategies builds systems that prevent all that

This thread is becoming more and more fascinating. I’d not thought of it as a totalitarianism ploy.
I had experienced it as controlling and culty though.

"Two lies and a truth" anyone ?

I am not interested in my colleagues' lives outside work. I know that makes me unfriendly and boring, but so be it. I don't need to know that they are having a more fascinating life than I am ;) I also don't want to meet their partners, kids and in particular, dogs.

I also think that if I actually expressed certain opinions in work, I would be out on my ear. For example, thinking that there is no place for male-bodied people in female sport. So, yes you can bring your "whole self" to work if your "whole self" is considered "appropriate".

many women are confident at home but at work there are often structures put up to ensure only quiet, meek, supportive women get promoted interestingly I often see the opposite, where confident women who are good at their jobs barely open their mouths when their menfolk are around. Very frustrating to see.

'Authentic communication' in this context, just like 'bringing your whole self to work' are euphemisms. Re-education and struggle sessions developed a bit of an unfortunate stigma. Same manipulation, same power game, closely related ideologies, same arrogant managerial class, different century.

I'd love to hear about these structures and systems that are getting quiet, meek, supportive women promoted. Thank god I've never encountered them or I'd still be doing the photocopying! The idea that these woke multinational corporations, who are desperate to get token women on their boards to meet their DIE targets, have structures in place to promote quiet, meek and supportive women is genuinely insane. Someone's taking crazy pills and I know it's not me.

Me too @gingerguineapig I am not interested in their lives out of work

I agree. My employer has no claim on my non-work life. They pay me to do my job during working hours. I don’t owe them more and my colleagues don’t need to know about my private life.

This stuff is becoming a massive time waster and must be impacting productivity. At my workplace we get mass emails every single day with links to articles, blogs and interviews, complete with artistic professional photos, about yet another staff member’s sexual orientation or gender identity or ethnicity and how we all need to be allies / bring our whole self to work / join another navel gazing group or go on another E&D course. People are being paid to write and broadcast this stuff, at a time when there’s “no money” for essential services and buildings are falling apart.