Do Not Bring Your ‘Whole Self’ to Work

Beware the latest fad from Human Resources.

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Silly me for reading this title and thinking this would have some good advice along the lines of:

• "Bring Your Whole Self" is good in theory. Making women and minorities feel welcomed/respected in workplaces that have traditionally not done so is a good goal.
• However, in reality, HR is not your friend.
• Despite "Bring Your Whole Self" posturing from companies, women and minorities are still at risk of repercussion when they actually do that in ways that make their white/male/cis/het/conservative/neurotypical coworkers uncomfortable.

But no. Trust the NYT to share the viewpoint from some Old/Big Money HR Handbook:

That’s right! Defy the latest catchphrase of human resources and leave a good portion of you back home. Maybe it’s the part of you that’s grown overly attached to athleisure. The side that needs to talk about candy (guilty). It could be the getting-married part of you still agonizing over whether a destination wedding is morally defensible in These Times.

Leave those things behind and I promise: No one in your workplace will miss them.

This comes off as: "Please don't talk about anything outside of work. I would prefer to view you as a cog (or in HR terms: "resource") rather than a human being."

[BYWS] dovetails with fortified corporate diversity, equity and inclusion (D.E.I.) programs. Both purport to make employees feel comfortable expressing aspects of their identity in the workplace, even when irrelevant to the work at hand.

Comfort sure sounds nice.

"You namby-pamby youngsters! How dare you want a comfortable working environment!"

So here’s an alternative: Let’s everyone bring only — or at least primarily — the worky parts. [...] It’s that old-fashioned thing we used to call “being professional.” Heck, it’s the you you were for your entire corporate history, until the prevailing H.R. doctrine abandoned buttoning things up.

The problem is that "being professional" used to be decided by "the good ol' boys" so used to mean things like:

• Women must wear makeup and skirts, and not acknowledge that they have families at home.
• Black hair styles are "not professional".
• Definitely no queers.
• Or non-Christians.

D.E.I. & BYWS are meant to counter those.

While I'm wary of it (because companies may espouse it as a value, but then not actually follow through) I'd much rather work at a company that claims to be inclusive rather than one that doesn't!

Anyway, this is just another reminder that I need to unfollow NYT. I think I'll do that now.