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.

Lie, I do. I have an invented "person" that comes to work, does inane nothings outside of work (reads travel books for eg) and that is it. There is no talk of photos or ourside of work activities unless it's the few colleagues I like and trust.

We all do it (my work-social friends) so nobody lifts an eyebrow if we were talking about being in the mosh pit at Wacken in the hols, but I'm telling the others about our wet week in Skegness.

This sounds just like my former workplace. The reality was that all the top level managers (and quite a few middle managers) were bullying, egotistical arseholes who constantly over-promised to clients, expected (already overworked) staff to work silly hours to try to achieve what they promised. All credit for success was taken by arsehole bosses (and used as proof that the promise was perfectly reasonable after all) and if there were any problems or the client was not happy the full blame was very publicly put on to someone else. Every year there was a staff satisfaction survey. Every year this told them that lots of staff were looking to leave in the next 12 months, most staff did not feel valued by management, most staff felt that they had a poor work/life balance and many staff felt that work was having a negative effect on their mental health.

Every year they said they had listened and were looking at ways to address this. The solution proposed was always some sort of away day/team building day followed by some sort of ongoing commitment to team lunches/mentoring etc. One of these was a Bring Your Whole Self to Work initiative. I am quite cynical but I suspect this was used in part to identify the people who were Not '[workplace name]' People. It was pretty clear that the 'whole selves' that they wanted in work were Jeff who used all last year's annual leave to cycle from lands end to john o'groates, Debbie who does lots of sponsored walks, Noel who fits work around singing in a pub band etc. Not Margaret who spends her weekends and evenings helping care for her mum with dementia, Gary who suffers from depression or Chloe who often cries on the way home because she has had to work late again and just wants to see her children. THOSE selves should be firmly locked away at home, whilst Margaret, Gary and Chloe listen to a talk from Brian about his rock climbing weekend

I agree completely. I don't want to tell work colleagues personal information. If I wanted to I would, a team building day isn't going to change that. And not sharing personal information and not wanting to socialise with colleagues outside work even those I like doesn't mean I can't do my job properly.

And I've JUST had an email inviting me to the last staff survey of the year <sigh>

Apparently it's optional, but they will hound me till I do it.

It's not new , I attended team building days like this 20+ years ago.

Tis all bollocks.
I literally take a different person to work. If there is an icebreaker I make shit up
Sod them, who cares?

You see, I'd be bringing my whole self to work by telling them this.

This is a very good point. It also allows discrimination on the basis of political and moral beliefs.
Disability equality is being completely ignored in this new world of workplace bollocks. One PP mentioned mandatory team social events. There are many, many people with disabilities who are physically or socially excluded from typical social events such as pub nights and sports. This has always been an issue but it’s even worse if participation is an actual requirement. Which can’t be legal, at least in the uk.
I’d be happy to tell them where to shove their jolly team social, but plenty of people would be badly affected by anxiety over this.

Yes, I'm lucky enough to have found a company that I like to work for. But I am 50 now, and I have learnt that colleagues are not friends. Because we WFH, we don't actually know much about each other, and this is OK, because the important thing is to get the work done.

Everyone should say this!

'It is supposed to be anonymous but they need your employee number so they know how many people have filled it in. Yeh right.'

Can't they just count how many surveys have been returned? 🤔

Real me and work me are two completely different people

A lot of this is from America. I think it is a shame when hearing all the lament from people such as you fine folk who have posted above. I get it though, as the sad reality is that the majority of us mere mortals exchange time for money every day because we have to, so all this bullshit propaganda doesn't really help.

That said, there is no reason that it shouldn't be as enjoyable as it possibly can be, and I think it's up to the leadership to do as much as they can to facilitate the workplace being as close to enjoyable as possible.

I also wonder when it became some sort of badge of honour how many hours people work? I've worked in organisations where there were almost competitions about who put in the longest day. I used to turn my team's access off so they couldn't work out of hours whenever it was possible to do so.

A previous company I worked for started all this 'bring your whole self to work' stuff, but I think it was more about people feeling comfortable to be themselves if they were, for e.g. gay. Loads of people commented that they didn't care who was what, and don't we just come to work to work, and sexuality doesn't come into it. And then they were told off for not understanding.

I work for a care charity, and they are very big on their caring, sharing family organisation values. Which go down the pan when they decide to make people redundant, and then they don't give a shit how they treat those people 😠

Very good point Fictional. I think perhaps the HR at my workplace was aware that there could be problems if they made attendance at social events actually formally mandatory as this was never put in writing anywhere. But it was made clear that attendance was expected. I once asked to take a day's holiday rather than go on an 'away day' that involved flying to another country on the Friday for forced fun activities, dinner, drinks etc then returning late on the Saturday. I was told that no annual leave could be granted on that day and there were very heavy hints that failure to attend would have a negative impact on my next application for promotion. Apparently this would cast doubt on whether I was a team player. At the time I had 2 small children (including a baby that I was breastfeeding) and my FIL was receiving end of life care so I didn't really want to be away from home on a Saturday. The manager who said I was not a team player was well aware of this.

The person I am at work is my public face. I hope I work hard and do my job well, but my private life, beliefs, feelings etc stay private. More importantly, I have no wish to engage with colleagues' "whole selves" either - there is already too much oversharing and general faffing about in so many workplaces.

Urgh my last place of work did something similar to this. Sent out an employee quiz for us all to fill in to help the 'culture'. People were honest (lack of benefits/favouritism/unpaid overtime etc) and management got EXTREMELY offended.

They actively tried to find out who said what, and even spoke to one of my colleagues about something he might have said. (This is a business with less than 20 employees!)

Most of us swerved the next quiz that got sent around.

Its okay though cos once in a blue moon they bought us pizza for lunch and put a ping pong table in the kitchen 😒

My dad retired 25 years ago, and yes it was coming into my mums work a bit in the ten years before she retired.

But what I meant was it definitely wasn't a think when they started out or in their 20s and 30s (in their industries at least) - so where did it come from in the last 30 to 40 years or so? What drove this as a huge cultural change that we all hate?

Does ANYONE like it?

Try the Irish Health Service 'Values in Action' for the ultimate workplace BS.
I'm sure there are people here who know what I mean😂

That’s appalling @sockarefootwear

Long time out of the workplace here ( thank you, God). I think it is all part of the attempt at social control and right think which I see almost everywhere. As PP have said, what is meant is not ‘bring your whole self’ it is ‘bring the self we approve of (and are going to enforce if we possibly can).

Back when I was a manager, I tried hard to accommodate people’s ‘whole selves’ ( as long as they were doing a good job and I liked them) . So I did make arrangements for the slightly later arrival due to school drop off, and the easier access client buildings for the chap who could hardly walk, but could think for Europe. I didn’t want to know about their sexual or political alignments, though, and I didn’t want them to know about mine ( though I expect they had a guess). I certainly didn’t want them to agree or pretend to agree with my choices, and still less with those of the BBC, the Establishment or the politically powerful. Because that would be totalitarian.

Elizabeth I had it right about not making windows into people’s souls.

Crumbs! I've been retired for ten years, had no idea this was such a widespread thing. What a load of absolute steaming bs.
actually quite sinister.

The only time I put my whole self in is when I’m doing the okey-cokey.

I absolutely agree,

I go to work because I want to earn money. I quite like what I do, it's ok, and my colleagues are pleasant people but they are not my friends.

In common with a PP I have a 'work persona' along with clothes that I buy specifically for work. My persona is to be superficially friendly and caring, to do my job as well as I can and then go home.

My colleagues know very little about me and that's how I like it!

Who thinks up all this dross??!!!. People go to work for monetary reward. It's a bonus if you have a good manager and nice colleagues but it's not the main thing in life.