Coerced into vulnerability session

[Watdidusay]

My team were brought into a mandatory vulnerability day with HR because of performance issues.

We were sat down and asked to share our most frightening experience. People were sharing stories of traumatic deaths of partners, being beaten nearly to death by violent family, one watched their mother jump out a window.

Everyone was bawling their eyes out.

We were then asked to share each team members best and worst trait, individually. Once again tears flooding. Comments like "maybe you're like this because of your childhood" etc were flying out.

There was no prep for this and no psychological support. Everyone said they felt coerced and are very upset.

Is this normal? We all think there's something wrong here.

What the...

Sorry, this is absolutely dreadful!

That sounds absolutely horrendous. Not normal at all IMO.

What on earth?!?!?!?! This is bonkers awful

That is absolutely not ok, I think I’d have walked out, just no

Vulnerability day!

Sue the fuckers for mental distress. Seriously.

Not in a million years would I have opened my mouth.

This sounds like deeply flawed and potentially damaging stuff. People who trust one another feel safe to be vulnerable, which is helpful for productive teams, you don't manufacture this through enforced trauma dumping. It sounds very poorly informed and planned. Awful OP. I hope you have someone to raise this with at work?

OP what is your line of work?

What on earth were they thinking!

Sounds truly horrendous!

This is terrible. Who delivered the training op?

Are you unionised? I'd be raising a collective grievance.

The implications for traumatising people and unlocking serious mental health issues...

What the fuck. Do you work for Scientologists? This is a psychotic thing to do at work of all places.

That is absolutely not normal. Never known that to happen, and I’ve worked in some pretty toxic places.

Are you in a union at all? I suspect they’d be interested if you are, but regardless of that I’d be looking for a new job.

This is absolutely not normal, ethical or appropriate. I would raise a grievance. It’s horrendous and abusive.

This sort of thing happens in cults

No competent organisation would run a session like that because of the grievances and lawsuits that would inevitably follow.

Vulnerability day my arse. That was a bullying day.

What country was this?

It's not normal. But neither is it normal to just go along with shit like this - wtf didn't you stand up and say, 'It is utterly inappropriate to expect people to share highly personal information in a work setting and I am leaving now'.

It's also unacceptable to 'share' someone's worst trait. 'Janet, you're an incompetent twat and everyone is sick of carrying you'. That's going to go down well, isn't it?

I did one of these “mutual vulnerability” days and it wasn’t good. Then I was made repeat it with me as facilitator - that was even worse. I found out some people had failed to give important stuff while others spilt the beans. It is the latest fad and very dangerous.
The facilitator usually says “only share what you feel able to share” but the problem is that vulnerability only works in performing teams, not ones where there is mistrust or plain psycho behaviour.

Okay so at least I know this is normal! Everyone is emotionally exhausted and feeling awful now

It isn't normal! It might be the latest thing that some HR teams are doing, but it isn't mainstream.
It's similar to emotional abuse in a family.
It can be extremely difficult to complain about HR or raise grievances against them, because they are essentially policing themselves. But they really can't make this shit mandatory (what's the penalty if you say no?) and there must be senior managers you can complain to.

It's not remotely normal and has the potential to be traumatizing as you experienced.

For each person who says they are scared of spiders, or heights, there will somebody sharing their most traumatic and hideous experience.

It exploits vulnerable people.

Fuck. That.

I repeat, Fuck That.

The rage and pure, unadulterated rampage through every aspect of both the employee handbook/terms & conditions of employment and employment law that would be seen were I forced into such a session would be unprecedented.

My starting point would be with ACAS;

Employers and employees have a mutual duty to treat each other honestly and with respect.

This means employees have the right to:

1. have trust and confidence in their employer
2. expect not to be bullied at work

Employers have the right to:

1. expect employees not to bully each other
2. expect employees to treat their managers with respect and follow all reasonable instructions

Employers also have a legal duty of care to protect their employees from harm. This includes dealing with bullying issues.

It also touches upon Protected Characteristics - being forced to disclose an assault/sex attack, the worst thing that happened is more likely to affect people with PCs - women, disabled people, women who have had or lost children, trans people with a GRC, for example; it's inherently less likely to be that type of trauma for a wealthy, white male.

Have they kept records of the session? Has somebody noted what they can use as coercion against the staff at a later date?

Rage doesn't even begin to touch my response.

All management were in the session too so there was no one above to discuss with.