Are we creating a cosmos of identical copies of the perfect employee?

Have you, too, noticed, a surprising phenomenon to which we are more and more confronted with each passing day? Organisations are bombarded with good-natured, kind-hearted messages from so-called business experts, pushing them to provide their employees with incentives to be happy; share activities; attend seminars and all kinds of events outside working hours; even practice sports, and share all that on their social networks to spread the word about how great things are at work.

Have you realised that we are all, in reality, instructed to be happy to, well, work well!

I am sorry, my friends, but this is blatant hypocrisy.

All this movement is NOT put in motion to make people happy at work.

They just want us to clone the profile of the ideal candidate by having as much control of their private lives as possible.

I have recently come across a post of a business coach who advised managers to “offer their employees the chance to practice more sports to be happy because they would be more productive”!

Can you imagine someone telling you what to do in your personal life to be content so that you work better? What comes next? Recommendations on our sexual activity? A little pink book on every employee’s desk listing how to be the perfect worker!

Few years ago, a work associate of mine complained because I had not “dug deep enough” in a conversation about the private life of a candidate I had recruited. My sin? I had missed the fact that she had experienced depression after he got divorced 3 years ago! My “light investigation in her eyes” was also criticised. Are we serious?

Someone has walked through fire and came out of a difficult situation with their head up. That should be great news. That should show strength of character. Yet, we hesitate to hire them because, at some point in their life, they had been under the weather.

At a time when our legislators are moving the mountains to protect our personal data, we ask hiring managers and recruiters to become private investigators or psychiatrists, and select talents like farmers do with tomatoes – all the same red, the same size, with no apparent defects.

For having experienced it, I can tell you with certainty that someone who has crossed a desert with bare feet has just as much to contribute to a team as an “orthonormal” candidate, who, apparently, knows neither failure not suffering. If you ask me, this complementarity makes perfect sense and is what every work environment needs.

A team is NOT a group of cloned people.

Each one’s wealth is their individuality, and that wealth is brought into the workplace, joining others with a collective spirit, and contributing to the success of teamwork.

Yes, this might be my utopia and critics may jump in thinking this viewpoint is rather a na?ve concept that cannot be applied anymore.

But, do you want to know where I believe lies happiness? In respecting boundaries.

So, when managers stop sending email in the middle of the night expecting an answer, when employees disconnect their phones and no longer have to work 12 hours because we did not replace the retired colleague, when (…), then chances are we will be a really better being – not at work… just in life.

Disclaimer: this article aims to initiate a debate around a trend. You are most welcome to share your views in comments, but PLEASE: do not take anything personally.

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Fabien Ghys

Founder of ExcellenceResumes (Google "ExcellenceResumes")