The epidemic of oversharing at work

It’s good to feel free to talk about personal things at work, but have things gone too far?

THERE IS, NATURALLY, a limit on how much you need to know about your coworkers, and it seems that many office workers may be reaching that point ― particularly their younger, talkative, very over-sharing coworkers.

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A comprehensive Business Insider piece looked at the state of workplace openness. Yes, it begins, people are encouraged to “bring their whole selves” to work, a correction for decades of telling people to compartmentalize their home lives. Or an overcorrection, some might say.

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“It can also be a little much,” wrote Emily Stewart. “Oversharing at work is on overdrive. While Gen Z may be the biggest culprit, there’s no age limit on spilling a few too many beans.”

The piece catalogues all sorts of odd, oversharey behaviours in the workplace, and even some defences of the practice from oversharers themselves, like one tech worker who argued that oversharing “may make me a little bit unprofessional sometimes, but I think it’s all about context and building upon the relationships that you already have.”

But it does seem to make the case that honesty in the workplace is swinging too far, and that some people yearn for a bit more of a buttoned-up environment. On that front, it’s another data point that suggests post-lockdown office dynamics are changing, and in some cases stepping back from the holistic wellness office culture of the 2010s, for better or worse.

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“There’s something about fussing over these seemingly superficial details that feels inherently retrograde and anathema to the ambition and passion that is supposed to animate work in our era,” wrote Carrie Battan in New York magazine. “For years, the casual workplace has been synonymous with the reasonable workplace. And to question that feels somehow mean or stodgy. But we’ve clearly become too comfortable with our colleagues.”

Consider it the case for being just a bit more distant from your colleagues. “At work, we’re all in this together, like it or not,” Stewart concludes. “Everyone will survive if we’re too familiar with one another, but it may be a bit better if we all scale back just a smidge.” Kieran Delamont