Are you aware that oversharing personal information at work could jeopardize your career? In this enlightening episode of the Employee Survival Guide®, Mark Carey dives deep into the intricate balance between building connections with colleagues and maintaining essential professional boundaries. As the pandemic has reshaped workplace dynamics, the risks associated with oversharing—especially concerning mental health discussions—have become more pronounced. Mark emphasizes the importance of understanding how these conversations can lead to misunderstandings and stigma among coworkers, potentially resulting in severe implications for your employment.
In a world where employee rights are constantly evolving, it’s crucial to recognize the legal ramifications of oversharing, particularly under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Mark sheds light on how oversharing can inadvertently expose employees to discrimination claims, whether it’s due to disability, race, or gender. Are you prepared to navigate these complex employment law issues? This episode serves as a vital resource for anyone looking to protect their rights while fostering a positive work culture.
But it’s not all doom and gloom! Mark also shares insightful strategies for using oversharing to your advantage. Discover how personal disclosures can be a powerful tool for negotiating severance packages or establishing legal protections in the face of workplace disputes. From understanding your employment contract to documenting conversations that may be beneficial in a legal context, this episode empowers you with the knowledge to take control of your career trajectory.
Whether you’re dealing with a hostile work environment, seeking to improve your job satisfaction, or simply trying to survive the complexities of remote work challenges, this episode of the Employee Survival Guide® is packed with valuable insights. Mark encourages listeners to think strategically about what personal information they share and how it can impact their professional lives. Don’t miss out on this essential guide to employee empowerment and survival in today’s workplace. Tune in now and equip yourself with the tools to navigate employment law, workplace discrimination, and the ever-evolving culture of work!
Links to sources in the podcast episode:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-bringing-your-whole-self-to-work-is-too-much-8a590034?st=5vnv97uogual3g0&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Awareness_Month
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-stop-oversharing-your-boss-get-ahead-by-linkedin-news/
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/15/business/pregnancy-discrimination.html
Link to blog article on the same subject: https://capclaw.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-oversharing-personal-information-at-work/
If you enjoyed this episode of the Employee Survival Guide please like us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We would really appreciate if you could leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player such as Apple Podcasts. Leaving a review will inform other listeners you found the content on this podcast is important in the area of employment law in the United States.
For more information, please contact our employment attorneys at Carey & Associates, P.C. at 203-255-4150, www.capclaw.com.
Transcript:
Speaker #0 Hey, it’s Mark here, and welcome to the next edition of the Employee Survival Guide, where I tell you, as always, what your employer does definitely not want you to know about, and a lot more. Hey, welcome back. It’s Mark. And today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the pros and cons of oversharing at work. We all do it, and you know what I’m talking about. You cannot resist doing this at work. What is the habit I’m referring to? Oversharing your personal information at work. I was recently reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about when bringing your whole self to work is too much. The article link is in your show notes. The article examines employee mental health and the sharing is caring ethos. We have all recently become accustomed to co-workers oversharing personal information during the pandemic. A reminder, May is Mental Health Awareness Month. But the Wall Street Journal article made me think of a larger issue no one really talks about, oversharing and why it is important to protect your job using personal boundaries and also asserting personal information to gain a legal advantage against your employer. Whether you are talking about sports, hobbies, your weekend, social activities, we all engage in sharing of information about our personal lives at work. We share to connect with colleagues and engage in self-promotion. But when… When does oversharing go too far? Here’s the problem with oversharing. When sharing information becomes oversharing, it raises many issues that the oversharer does not contemplate when sharing. If an employee is experiencing a mental health issue and shares at work, some co-workers and supervisors do not have the background experience to handle the discussion in a respectful and objective manner. From my experience, many employees interpret a co-worker’s bipolar color. anxiety or depression elaboration as a red flag resulting in pejorative name-calling behind the employee’s back. For example, she’s crazy, etc. And co-workers regarding the employee as having a mental disability. When I’m investigating a legal case for an employee, I ask what the client has heard other co-workers say about them behind closed doors or directly to their face. I’m looking for two forms of disability discrimination. Claims… that I can use against the employer. The first one is disability discrimination directed at your mental nervous condition. And the second one is regarded as disabled discrimination, where coworkers perceive you as having a mental nervous condition, even though you may not have one. These are the two aspects of the American Disabilities Act, and state law also conforms the same way. There’s actually a third respect, and that has to do with being associated with a person who has a disability. Yes, that too is also protected. You’d be surprised how often I find inflammatory comments made by coworkers, in particular managing supervisors. Coworkers can be insensitive about other employees experiencing mental health issues, even though there has been a great deal of public support lately for mental health awareness during the pandemic. There are other problems with oversharing beyond the mental health issue. Discussing finances, marriage can put off coworkers. And there’s an article that I’ll put in the show notes in LinkedIn. It’s entitled, How to Stop Oversharing with Your Boss, a must-read. Now, oversharing can become illegal in some cases. In some cases, coworkers and supervisors who, quote, overshare can violate the employment rights of other employees in the office. And I think we all know what I’m talking about. For example, openly discussing weekend sexual exploits with coworkers can infuse the work environment with sex and negatively impact other employees who just happen to overhear the conversation. Obviously, employees who behave this way did not read the company code of conduct policies for public companies and private ones and the latest DEI initiative. Other examples can include discussions about older workers, physical and mental characteristics and abilities. And even if benign, can cause older workers in the office to feel ostracized because of their age. There are many more older employees working in the workforce today. who are not retiring and cannot retire or just want to continue working in general. In any case, I ask clients about the general office banter in order to build the legal leverage for severance negotiations. You’d be surprised what you can discover if you ask the right questions. And I encourage you to change your optics when looking at your fact pattern because there may be information gems right in front of you you just don’t realize how to connect the dots on. So. You’d be surprised what I can gather. The biggest overshare I see all the time is a discussion by a manager asking when my client is going to retire and what their exit strategy is. It’s illegal to ask employees over the age of 40 this question, because it conditions their job based upon their age. It happens so often that I ask every client who is at least 50 years old the same question. Ironically, 6 out of 10 times, the client responds that they were asked about their retirement plans, either from coworkers or directly from their supervisors. Why is this? I will also point out that many managers will ask a coworker to dig up dirt on older employees by asking about their retirement plans. Again, this is illegal. A few years ago, the New York Times ran a story about one of our cases involving pregnancy discrimination. The article discussed the oversharing that happened to one employee. Quote, on the company’s trading floor, men bantered about groping the Queen of England’s genitals. Ms. Murphy’s boss, Guy Freshwater, openly discussed how much hot ass there would be at the gym near the new office in New York City. But when Ms. Murphy told Mr. Freshwater that she was pregnant with her first child, he told her, that would, quote, definitely plateau your career, end quote. The supervisors’ oversharing here caused the employer liability for pregnancy discrimination, of course, because the employee’s boss expressed his biased opinion about female employees and pregnancy. Using oversharing to your advantage. No one really discusses this topic, but I do. What if you could use oversharing to set up your employer and build either job protections or a legal case for severance negotiation purposes? This was the idea I thought about when I read the Wall Street Journal article about oversharing at work. When I work with clients before they are placed on performance improvement plans or fired, I get a unique opportunity to set up the employer for liability. First and most important, I need to really get through this point. I have to get the employee beyond the, quote, fear-based psychology, end quote, that employers work so hard to instill in all employees. Clients often explain they cannot have they don’t have the stomach to withstand any further maltreatment by their employers and just want it to read the writing on the verbal writing on the wall that’s basically saying get the blank out. So getting past the fear-based aspect is the first thing. And you really just need to push and shove yourself past it because it’s just a fiction the employer creates of deterrence. It’s really not real. Second, once I explain the strategy to the client, they begin to self-advocate directly with or his or her peers and supervisors. Specifically, the client intentionally verbally, both verbally or in writing and via email, over shares personal information to coworkers, managers, and human resource personnel. about topics such as disability, medical issues, FMLA leave, PTSD-related concerns, pregnancy, discrimination experience from other employees, the list goes on. If there is a verbal discussion between the client and the coworker where oversharing is occurring, the client would then document the conversation in an email. The email must summarize the same information as was said during the verbal communication. The idea here is to build a factual record using the timestamp of an email. So you’re oversharing to protect yourself. You’re literally seeding the fact pattern deliberately, provoking and baiting the employer into discussions about things that are going to benefit you. So you develop a game plan. This process of intentionally oversharing places the employer in a box. I like that. It’s a nice analogy. If the employer reacts negatively to the oversharing client, the client can assert a retaliation claim or assert other forms of harassment. As you can see, oversharing personal information can be used as a tool for the employee’s legal agenda. Yes, you’re entitled to have a legal agenda at work. For example, the employee may want to overshare for purposes of requesting reasonable accommodations, reporting sexual harassment, reporting retaliation, etc. Since employers always set up employees for performance improvement plans and terminations, why can’t employees do the same thing? I actively encourage employees to aggressively, quote, police their employment situations and put the employer on the defensive. I’ve seen this process work effectively to promote employee legal claims and increase severance compensation or stay employed. I have this personal record of two plus years of keeping someone employed by making continuous internal email complaints and then later on external complaints to state and federal agencies. which kept the employee employed. She just wanted to work there, and she wanted to correct the situation with her employment because she needed income. Before you go out and overshare, develop your strategy about what information you are oversharing and to whom. And while you’re doing this, think several steps ahead and see if you can position yourself with an advantage over the employer, wherein you will use the oversharing information to aid your severance negotiation or your legal case in the court against the employer in the court. So I hope you found this information provocative. Again, that’s what I’m thinking about all the time. And oversharing can be used in a way that’s very powerful to force your employer’s hand. These are things your employer is not going to share with you. And these are things I’ve been sharing with you, topics like this, give you just insight. These are things that I actually do with clients and employers hate it. But employers reward my clients with higher severance pay. So I was over the weekend was sitting by a river behind our house with my son. We were talking and we were watching the fish. We’re… Obviously trying to fish, but the fish weren’t biting, but there was hundreds of fish schooling in a nice pool. So the analogy here is it’s like fishing in a bucket with your employer. Oversharing can be used to bait your employer to get what you want. And I’m trying to shift that focus mindset for you that there are different tactics you can use to push your employer around. And why can’t and why not? If you understand the rules of engagement, which I’ve been trying to explain to people for, I don’t know how many episodes, but here you go. Another example where you can actually overshare to your advantage. So I hope you find this interesting. I’ll leave some links in the show notes and have a great week. Talk to you soon. Hey, it’s Mark, and thank you for listening to this episode of the Employee’s Fiber Guide. If you’d like to be interviewed for our podcast and share your story about what you’re going through at work and do so anonymously, please send me an email at mcary at capclaw.com. And also, if you like this podcast episode and others like it, please leave us a review. It really does help others find this podcast. So leave a review on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you very much and glad to be of service to you.