Bring your whole self to work and other bollocks

[Waitingforthetrain]

Hi

Name changed for this.
Is anyone else sick of all this nonsense.
Now I understand it’s all the rage to encourage diversity and inclusivity, yes all good.
However, I go to work as a means to a end. Until I can find some other way of paying my bills it’s a necessity.
Recently we were asked to complete an anonymous survey. Apparently most people could not be arsed. Those who did told it like it is. Exactly that work is work and that’s all. The manager is flawed, the environment is flawed and if they won the lottery tomorrow then staff would piss off and leave.
Apparently the manager is upset by this. There boss is not happy. Blah blah blah.
We now have to think of team building exercises. Nobody cares.
Management do not listen. Staff leave. Management ask how things can improve then do nothing to change.
I don’t want anyone telling me to leave as the role I have suits my purpose.
I go to work. I like most of the staff. I don’t trust the boss.
I do not want to divulge personal info to management as in the past this has been used as a stick to beat me with. The boss is an expert at slipping in criticism based on what you have divulged previously. For example you say your dad has dementia then the reason you are not smiling inanely at customers us because of your dad. You say you are tired because your toddler kept you up all night and the reason you have performed your task but no more us because if your naughty toddler.
None of the staff want team building exercises as the management stay the same, they never take on staff suggestions such as more flexibility, working from home, staff allowed time off at Easter etc.
Even the first suggestion of where to go for the team building was shot down by one of the managers as they do not want to do that activity.
Just having a rant.
Well done if you’ve got to the end.

I hate 'bring your whole self to work'. I'm a very private person, this sort of thing makes me seem secretive and standoffish. I always see these initiatives as nothing but box-ticking exercises, even when I'm involved in organising them.

That sounds less like ‘bring your whole self to work’ than ‘tell me personal information I will then use to criticise your performance rather than reevaluating my management style or considering the demoralisation of my team’.

Nobody gets my whole self until I can trust them 😂

I think we work in the same place @Waitingforthetrain

Nobody would want my whole self at work. I keep it to myself and think grim thoughts without sharing them.

All this crap can FRO. Workplaces would be much improved by management paying attention to staff wellbeing, providing a flexible environment, supporting staff to do their best and tackling the few piss takers that bring morale down (management or other staff).

As someone with ADHD, I take drugs to ensure my whole self doesn't come to work - nobody needs that shit in an office environment. I guess it's just certain 'selves' that are welcome in their entirety.

Grey Rock Technique works well in those kinds of workplaces.

I don’t want my whole self at work as this helps me to maintain work-life balance. On work days I wear different clothes, keep my personal opinions about political and social issues to myself if they aren't relevant to important ethical business decisions, and go by the "long" version of my name. I like having a different 'persona' on non work days, it helps me to relax. My employers pay for my services for 40 hours a week. The other 128 hours are none of their business. Happily my employers do not have this silly "whole self" policy so I'm fine.

See also "staff who match our values".

But the values are just a few nice-sounding adjectives that they try to shoehorn into everything.

Usually whilst a) demonstrating that they don't actually value those values and b) showing a county disfavour to anyone who is different to them.

So whilst I'm supposed to be compassionately setting a budget, I'm also being bitched at by HR for asking them to complete their work within legal timeframes so that I can compassionately work late to fix one of their messes. But if I'm honest about the situation - nope, naughty!

But WHYYYYY has it all come about? Where did it come from?

It's all so recent, my parents in their seventies are horrified by the concept, it was all 'professionalism, separation of work and private life and discretion' in their time.

work is work, it's not my whole life, ids a way of putting food on the table and bettering the future for my children. i don't do it because i want to be there and love my job...i like my job if i didn't i'd find another but it's not my identity.

If you were filling that survey out online there’s probably a way they could find out who said what.

We used MS Teams for big meetings , there was a ‘whiteboard’ part of the meeting where people could add comments anonymously… except if you hovered over the text as it was being typed out it would pop up a little box with their name!

Christ I could have written your post, along with probably a large majority of others.

no real advice, just wanted to echo your points.

It's bollocks - and will be supplanted by some new bollocks in time.

Just imagine it really happening, so you'd know which of your colleagues went swinging on the weekend or collects Nazi memorabilia and so on...

Obviously you shouldn't have to hide that you're gay or anything - but equally, you don't necessarily need to mention it. Over time, you do tend to end up knowing if people have partners, children, some of their interests, particularly if you work together for years, but it should happen organically, and people should no more be forced to talk about their private lives than they should be forced to hide it all.

Absolutely ghastly all of it. Work is just that.Work. It is exhausting to expect people to think or behave otherwise.

It’s disingenuous bollocks OP.
They don’t mean bring your whole self ( eh? ) they mean bring the positive, happy, can do attitude part of your self and make it the whole part of you during work time.

Oh and when we ask you to do our job and tell us how to improve ‘things’ ( have management specified what these things are? ) it goes without saying the suggestions have to exclude wages and be cheap.

It is bollocks, and no thank you, I wouldn't be sharing from my private life. It's often, from what friends say, jobs where dissatisfaction is high, and morale and pay low.

I genuinely don't understand it. Why can't they be content with the % of yourself that cheerfully fulfils the job description with the occasional possibility of a bit more if there's a work emergency? I always think there's a slightly sinister edge to it, 'bring your whole self in, none of you belongs entirely to yourself anymore'.

Good on you all for being honest in the survey and telling them that they are the problem.
As always with bad management they are trying to turn it back on you with “team building” and such. I worked in a toxic workplace like this. The management (who were horrible bullies) noted the low morale, blamed us for it and sent us on endless team building and “understanding your personal whatever style” courses. It didn’t work of course and the staff turnover was very high.
All the current bollocks about bringing your whole self to work (nobody really wants you to do that) and false inclusivity is a fashion. It gives them easy brownie points for being a Good Employer or so they think.
Pretty much every employer I’ve known has done the survey thing where they don’t listen to what you all say, they just impose what they wanted to anyway.
”What would make your working life better? Give us ideas”
Flexible working and managers who do their job properly please.
”No not that! Here, have a mindfulness course and some free fruit”.

YANBU at all!
Like other posters, I have different clothing for work (down to underwear and perfume!) and out of work hours I am my own self.
I work hard when I am there.
I like most of my work colleagues and some I keep in contact with outside work, but I avoid forced out-of-work celebrations.
I also know that once people leave work they are forgotten pretty quickly so I have no pretences that exactly the sawm will happen to me when I am no longer there.
It's all bollocks.

It's the opposite of inclusive "share your personal lives so people can discriminate on ALL your characteristics, not just the visible ones"

My boss has been told by head office to "helicopter out"
We are still trying to work out if that means she's been sacked or that she needs to look at the bigger picture or she's got a huge pay rise and no longer needs to bus it in to the office.
We drink lots of frothy coffee and eat loads of bourbons whilst we ponder this, and just carry on carrying on.

I am with you OP. We have been sent a Wellbeing survey to complete. All it's done is made us cross and we've had to abandon it part done as the categories are impossible quantify. Just too many variables to say how happy I feel about X aspect of my work. And it still needs doing anyway, even if we all say we bloody hate doing it, it is what it is.
I would love to know what the thinking and agenda is behind it.
We start meetings with Ice Breaker crap like "how has your morning been so far?" "What's made you feel proud recently?"
Half an hour gone before the agenda is mentioned and I don't care if so and so's kid has just learnt to tie their laces or whatever. It's irrelevant! If we all just spent half an hour chatting to each other during the working day and doing nothing else it would be frowned upon, but management directed time wasting chat is ok?
Now we have "ground rules" sometimes too, and things to be aware of. Like X has a headache, Z may need to take a phone call.
I mean, if it needs writing down for a group of adults that we shouldn't talk over each other then we really are in a sorry state.
Gosh, that was cathartic!

If I brought my whole self to work I'd either be sacked or sectioned!