Employee Survival Guide® - The Pros & Cons of Oversharing At Work

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

In this episode of the Employee Survival Guide, Mark addresses the issue of oversharing at work.  He explores the pros and cons of oversharing. Obviously, oversharing can be damaging to other employees, i.e. mental nervous conditions and coworker abuse, a sexual harassment comment or ageist comment. But oversharing can also be used as a tool to set up your employer and protect your rights, causing your employer to go on the defense, and enhancing your severance package.  In the alternative, oversharing can be used to prolong your job and prevent the employer from firing you when you overshare, i.e. complain of discrimination in a time stamped email.  Again, another tactic your employer does not want you to know about.   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_permalinkhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Awareness_Monthhttps://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.htmlLink 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.

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 sharing his caring ethos. We have all recently become accustomed to coworkers 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. 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 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, 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 coworkers 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 coworkers 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 co-workers 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, six 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. read 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 conversation. 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? 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 why 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 were 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's 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, 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.

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