Corporate America’s Retreat from the ‘Whole Self’ Era

Remember the time when workers were invited to “bring their whole selves to work”? When they were welcomed to zones of psychological safety and encouraged to speak freely? When they were given highly flexible work arrangements to suit their lifestyles? When dogs and cats roamed through Zoom meetings?Those days are over. While no company will exactly say, “return to the office, and please leave your whole self at home,” corporate expectations have changed. The breezy notion of colorful individuality now feels risky. But where exactly are we now?“The pendulum is swinging. This goes back and forth through the decades,” said Janine Yancey, founder and CEO of Emtrain, which creates workplace compliance and culture training. At the moment, Emtrain’s customers are focused on productivity, cost savings, and efficiency. “It’s really about the bottom line right now,” Yancey said. The employee experience and company culture has receded in importance. “That’s less of a priority.”The “whole self” concept became HR gospel during the first half of the decade, propelled in different ways by three events: the pandemic, the surge of support for DEI, and the Great Resignation. (One of the first explicit references came a few years earlier in a TED talk.) During the pandemic, when remote work offered glimpses into our colleagues’ homes and lives, and widely shared stress revealed new parts of ourselves. With schools and childcare centers closed, companies granted unprecedented flexibility for workers to care for family members. The social justice movement of 2020 also opened the door for self-sharing at work. Employers spun up employee resource groups (ERGs) and some invited employees to share their feelings in all-hands meetings. Some, like Walmart, even trained staff in mental health first aid to better recognize distress among coworkers.The Definition Is TrickyBut what exactly does it mean to bring one’s whole self to work? It depends, and that may be the challenge as the bar is reset. Some may feel that it’s a license to dissolve healthy boundaries. Want to pitch a fit in a meeting? Go right ahead. That’s your whole self. Others may feel relief that they can talk openly about being on the autism spectrum without fear of discrimination. Like most trendy terms, its definition is nebulous. While individual companies may have taken the time to define the term, there’s been no broader consensus.It’s unlikely that any employer ever wanted employees to bring everything to work. Insubordination was never welcome, even if it comes naturally. “Authenticity at work is guarded authenticity,” said John Higgins, who studies and writes about activism in the workplace. “Because at work, you can be fired. That’s the reality.” What really undermined the “whole self” movement was the backlash against DEI.  Some companies and universities have scrapped their DEI plans, closed diversity offices, and laid off chief diversity officers—once a fast-growing C-suite position. Following President Trump’s executive order to end all federal DEI programs, there have been state-level bans, lawsuits, and corporate roll-backs.The skirmishes are often public. Some federal employees were fired or put on leave for participating in DEI programs recommended by the first Trump administration. More recently, some employers fired or disciplined workers for social posts they made about the murder of right-wing political figure Charlie Kirk. According to a special report from Reuters, more than 600 Americans were “fired, suspended, placed under investigation or disciplined by employers for comments about Kirk’s September 10 assassination.” Several of those workers have since filed lawsuits against their employers.Where Should the Line Be Drawn Now?Especially for leaders, the idea of unfiltered authenticity is misguided, according to management expert Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, writing in Harvard Business Review. “Decades of psychological research studies show that power diminishes inhibition, weakens empathy, reduces self-control and any sense of obligation to others, and amplifies the toxic traits leaders already possess,” asserts Chamorro-Premuzic, author of the new book Don’t Be Yourself: Why Authenticity Is Overrated (and What to Do Instead). Instead, leaders should model values instead of performing them, protect their personal lives, and choose empathy over ego.Even the term “psychological safety” needs to be revisited. Amy Edmonson, the Harvard management professor who popularized the term, argues that bringing one’s whole self is precisely what we shouldn’t be doing. “Your ‘authentic’ or ‘whole’ self also includes the undesirable, unprofessional, and dark side dimensions of your character,” she wrote in a recent article for Fast Company.Venture capitalist Marc Andressen, a vocal critic of DEI, wrote on X in late 2024: “The one thing you should never, ever, ever do is bring your full self. Leave your full self at home where it belongs and act like a professional and a grownup at work and in public.”It’s arguable that “whole self” was never what workers needed. In a New York Times opinion piece, University of Pennsylvania economist Corinne Low wrote that “women, and especially mothers, don’t necessarily need remote work. We don’t need so-called flexible work schedules. What we need are plain old boundaries–jobs where work stops at a set time and allows other parts of life to exist without interruption.”But employers reach outside the workplace, where our whole selves live. In many cases, the comments about Charlie Kirk that resulted in terminations were made on personal social media accounts. It’s not the first time this has happened. A private-sector employee was fired from her job in 2020 after she called the Black Lives Matter “racist, claiming it caused segregation and alleging Black people were ‘killing themselves,’” according to the New Jersey Monitor. The employee sued, but a judge upheld the termination. While some may decry unprofessionalism in the workplace, others may be pushing back on expressions of personal identity that don’t align with with their ideological camp. For instance, the Trump administration wanted to ban transgender people from changing the sex marker on their passports, and the Supreme Court upheld the ban. We might ask, Is it that we don’t want people to behave unprofessionally, or that we don’t want people to feel safe and comfortable disclosing politicized aspects of their identity?When employers invite authenticity at work, Higgins said, what’s usually welcome are the traits that benefit the business. At its most mercenary, the message is really, “bring a socially acceptable version of yourself so I can use you.” Of course, what’s socially acceptable changes. What will be the next cycle? “Employers will overreach a little bit, and then employees will start to mobilize because that’s the only way you can achieve some leverage and power,” said Emtrain’s Yancey. Sometimes unions are formed or sit-ins are held. Who does the rabble-rousing has a great deal to do with who has the upper hand in the job market—or what ideology is in vogue. But the pendulum will one day swing again, she said. “It always does.” Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Featured illustrated by Dave Long Media/iStock by Getty Images)