There has been a lot written about authenticity at work. A quick search will turn up thousands of articles, podcasts and HR trend pieces, probably a reflection of how strongly the idea has captured organisational imagination over the last decade. At the heart of much of this conversation sits a single phrase: “bring your whole self to work.”
It has become one of the most recognisable phrases in modern HR, appearing in recruitment campaigns, values statements and leadership blogs. The intention behind it is a good one: to encourage authenticity, belonging and psychological safety at work.
But when a phrase becomes this widespread, it is worth pausing to ask what it actually means. What are we asking of employees when we tell them to “bring their whole selves to work”? And what are we offering in return?
These are questions we think about a lot at neurobox, because they land very differently for neurodivergent employees than for their neurotypical colleagues. For those who have spent years masking at work, suppressing natural ways of thinking, communicating or moving through the day, “authenticity” is rarely a neutral invitation.
Where did the idea come from?
The phrase has its roots in academic research. William Kahn, writing in 1990, described how people bring varying degrees of themselves, physical, emotional and cognitive, to their work. His paper, Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work, argued that full engagement depends on three psychological conditions being met:
Meaningfulness – a sense that the work matters, and that the person’s contribution makes a difference
Safety – the ability to show up as oneself without fear of negative consequences
Availability – having the personal resources (physical, emotional, psychological) to engage fully
Kahn was not prescribing a slogan. He was describing the conditions under which people feel able to bring more of themselves to their work. Three decades on, his ideas have been repackaged into workplace directives, and something has shifted in the translation. “Bring your whole self to work” has come to mean something closer to “be open, be visible, share your story”. Kahn’s conditions, which placed the responsibility on the organisation to make engagement possible, have gradually become something employees are expected to demonstrate.
Why do organisations want this?
So, why has the idea caught on so strongly? Leadership coach Henna Inam captures something many employees recognise:
“Many of us hold back a big part of what makes us human and vulnerable in order to be seen as professional, competent, and successful.”
Most of us have done this at some point, edited ourselves to fit what we think “professional” looks like. The benefit organisations are seeking, when they talk about authenticity at work, is a workplace where less editing is necessary. Where people can contribute as themselves rather than as a version of themselves, and where the energy currently spent on self-editing goes into the work instead.
For neurodivergent employees, that editing has a specific name: masking. Masking is the effort of suppressing natural traits, stimming, directness, sensory-driven preferences, and different communication rhythms to fit an idea of what “professional” looks like. The cost is well documented: exhaustion, burnout, anxiety, depression, and reduced capacity to do the work the person was hired to do.
So when employers say they want people to bring more of themselves to work, the instinct is a good one. Research consistently links authenticity at work with higher well-being, stronger relationships and more creative contribution. Creating the conditions for people to work as themselves, rather than as a performance of themselves, is worth doing.
The challenge is what happens when organisations use the language of authenticity without putting the practical support behind it. When organisations adopt “bring your whole self to work” without carefully considering what it asks of employees, a few important issues can emerge.
- ‘Whole self’ means different things to different people. Organisations rarely define what they mean, and employees interpret it through their own experiences. For a confident extrovert, it might mean sharing weekend plans on a Monday morning. For a neurodivergent employee, it might mean deciding whether to disclose a diagnosis they have carefully protected for years. The same phrase can ask very different things of different people, and the risks are rarely shared evenly.
- Authenticity may be more conditional than it first appears. Many organisations operate behavioural frameworks, the values and expected behaviours that define “how we work here.” What happens when someone’s “whole self” doesn’t fit that frame? The implicit message can become: bring your whole self to work, provided it aligns with what we’ve already decided we want. This is a contradiction that needs to be acknowledged and considered carefully.
- Disclosure without operational systems carries real risk. When employees share vulnerabilities, diagnoses or aspects of identity, what support is in place for them? Without robust workplace adjustments, trained line managers, and genuinely confidential support routes, an invitation to disclose can become an exposure. Information shared in trust can, often unintentionally, affect performance reviews, promotion decisions or team dynamics in ways the employee never agreed to.
- Boundaries aren’t always a sign of disengagement. There are good reasons why people keep parts of themselves out of the workplace, self-preservation among them. Deciding what we share at work is a legitimate choice, not a failure of authenticity. When organisations read reluctance to disclose as a cultural problem, they can pathologise healthy boundary-setting.
How does remote working change this?
Remote working has added another dimension to the conversation. For many employees, the physical workplace they were meant to bring themselves to has, for much of the week, disappeared.
There are real losses in this shift to remote working. The spontaneous interactions, body language and casual signals of identity that come with sharing a space don’t translate neatly onto video calls. Scheduled meetings can feel more scrutinised rather than less, and moments of unplanned connection are harder to come by.
But remote working also creates space that didn’t exist before. Working from home can reduce the sensory demands of open-plan offices, ease the social performance of in-person interaction, and reduce the pressure to conform to a dominant office culture. For many neurodivergent employees, remote working isn’t a compromise on authenticity, it is the first time authenticity at work has felt possible.
The implication isn’t that remote is better or worse. It is that the “whole self” rhetoric built for a physical office doesn’t transfer without thought, and that organisations need to consider how psychological safety, relationship-building and genuine self-expression work across distributed teams.
So what does meaningful support look like?
If an organisation is serious about making authenticity at work possible, the bulk of the work sits with the employer, not the employee. Much of this is already a legal duty under the Equality Act 2010, specifically, the duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled employees, which includes many neurodivergent people who meet the Act’s definition.
In practice, we see a few things that make a real difference. These are the principles that underpin our neuroNavigation approach, the way we work with partner organisations to move from inclusion intention to sustained practice.
Reasonable Adjustments, Taken Seriously
Reasonable adjustment requests should not be a one-off form filled in at onboarding, but a day-to-day, evolving process. A good workplace needs assessment, tailored workplace strategy coaching, the right assistive technology with relevant training, and a willingness to adapt environments, hours and meeting formats; these come together to create genuinely personalised support. Adjustments should be reviewed as roles and people change.
Line Managers Equipped to Hold These Conversations
Most managers don’t receive training in recognising distress, having good, confidential conversations, or signposting to the right resources. Equipping them is often the difference between a policy that exists on paper and a workplace employees genuinely trust.
Psychological Safety That’s More Than a Value Statement
That means clear anti-discrimination policies with meaningful consequences, multiple confidential routes to raise concerns, and leaders who model the behaviours they are asking of others.
Employee Networks with Real Backing
Peer-led networks, for neurodivergent colleagues, disabled colleagues and other groups, are among the highest-value investments an organisation can make. Their effectiveness depends on being properly resourced, listened to, and able to influence decisions.
Mental Health Resources That Don’t Stigmatise
Employee Assistance Programmes are a starting point, not the whole answer. Wellness, resilience and stress-management support matter, but they shouldn’t be asked to compensate for workplace conditions that are making people unwell in the first place.
Is there a more honest alternative?
Rather than asking employees to bring their whole self to work, which may be neither possible nor, on closer inspection, desirable, organisations might aim for something more measured. An environment where people can bring an authentic professional self shifts the question in useful ways:
- It recognises that authenticity exists on a conntinuum, and can shift over time.
- It acknowledges that different aspects of identity are relevant in different contexts, and that choosing what to share is a right, not a failure of engagement.
- It protects the boundary between personal and professional as something psychologically necessary, not something to overcome.
- It places the responsibility where it belongs: on the organisation to create conditions safe enough that authenticity becomes genuinely possible.
It is a smaller claim than “bring your whole self to work.” We’d suggest it is also a more honest one.
Beyond the buzzword
The “bring your whole self to work” movement started from a good place. But the version of it that now circulates in strategy decks and LinkedIn posts has drifted from Kahn’s original thinking, and it often asks more of employees, particularly neurodivergent employees, than it offers in return.
Organisations serious about inclusion might find it more useful to ask a sharper set of questions:
- Are we creating conditions where people can thrive professionally without having to suppress core parts of who they are?
- Do our policies, practices and adjustments acknowledge how differently this question affects different employees?
- “Do we have the infrastructure (training, adjustments, psychological safety, mental health support) ready for what we are asking people to disclose?”
The goal isn’t for employees to bring their whole selves to work. It is to create workplaces where no one feels compelled to leave their essential parts at the door.
Ready to move beyond the buzzword?
If you’re looking to move beyond “bring your whole self to work” as a slogan, and create the conditions that make authenticity genuinely possible for your neurodivergent and disabled employees, we can help.
We work with organisations through neuroNavigation, our step-by-step approach to neuroinclusion, designing and delivering the practical support that underpins an inclusive culture, not as a one-off initiative, but as a coherent, evolving approach.
Whether you’re reviewing existing practice or starting from scratch, we’ll help you:
- Audit your current neurodiversity and disability support against the Equality Act and best practice
- Deliver line manager training that equips managers to have meaningful conversations about adjustments, disclosure and support
- Design workplace adjustments as live processes, not one-off forms
- Create the psychological safety practices that make authentic engagement possible
Get in touch with the team, we’d love to hear from you.
About the author
Deborah works strategically with corporate clients to enable neuroinclusion in the workplace through our consultancy and audit services. She also works with academic research partners on impact-driven research projects, developing NB’s research and innovation agenda.
She has a PhD in dyslexia, performance training, and inclusion from the University of Kent. Her practice-based research has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, books, and toolkits, including work with Routledge and the British Dyslexia Association. She has also contributed expert commentary to a range of publications, including the Financial Times.
Deborah is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for Healthcare and Communities at Coventry University.
Related readings
Employee Resource Groups: What They Are and Why They Matter
