Below, Jodi-Ann Rurey shares five key insights from her new book, The original: the myth of bringing yourself to work.

Jodi-Ann is a writer and critic on race, culture, and health capital. Her essays appear in a variety of art, business, and literary publications. Created and hosted the Lit Lounge, a prose and poetry lounge: folk art as wellBlack cancerPodcast.

What is the big idea?

Originalmore than criticism of the hollow promise of originality at work. The workplace is an invitation to question the structural truths of what it takes to be human. To begin with, we need to take seriously the health and well-being of workers most affected by harmful policies, performance practices, and opportunistic rhetoric about representation and inclusion.

Listen to a read-aloud version of this book by Jodi-Ann Ozf or the next big idea app.

1. Center the voices of those most affected.

For years, I’ve heard the phrase “bring your full, authentic self to work” to support diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. In the community, I have heard workers of marginalized identities talk about the desire to be more authentic and the obstacles that prevent our “full selves” from flourishing.

Personally, I resent the idea of ​​my friends and colleagues’ workplace authenticity, the authenticity of something that says “yeah, right,” or “don’t want it” or “don’t know what that means.” I wrote this book to increase the volume of these conversations.

The reality is that we give more of ourselves than institutions receive from our careers, health and well-being, and therefore we risk our livelihoods and lives. The narrative of “Completely original self-starting” is based on the silence and silence of workers who are included with exhibitions and who are most affected by their experiences.

But we can’t understand how things work without talking to black people and other people of color, people with disabilities, women, queer people, and especially people who sit at the intersection of marginalized identities. I want to say that these identity companies are telling the story, they are discriminating, insulting, abusing us and targeting us for money and opportunity.

2. Collective entry, reasonable accommodation.

I have a spinal cord injury and need to take care of my body in a way that minimizes flare-ups of neuropathic pain. Prior to the global Covid-19 pandemic, my employer found it difficult to meet my access needs. The telecommuting policy was limited to two designated days per week. The conference room policy allowed teams to book rooms anywhere on campus leading up to the start of the meeting. Colleagues, meeting away from my place on campus, or that I carry a heating pad with me wherever I go, or why I got out of construction.

When a colleague tested positive for Covid-19, just one email shut down our entire campus. Around the country and the world, work, school and life have moved online. Telecommuting and other so-called “reasonable accommodations” previously denied to disabled workers because they were too expensive, too complicated, and bad for productivity and morale soon became standard procedure.

“During the Covid-19 pandemic, it has revealed how companies will fare.”

Employers have redesigned workplaces, designed space modifications and provided personal protective equipment. The relaxed policy allowed workers to reduce their schedules or change their working hours. This restructuring did not reach everyone. Office workers and frontline workers are disproportionately affected by the pandemic. People who are unable to work carry diseases because of death and disease, because employers and legislators fail to protect them. Again, the Covid-19 pandemic has ushered in the practice of collective access on an unprecedented scale.

The support and structure we need as disabled workers are not “accommodations” as we have learned to call them. Our input needs must be met to do our job. It is unnecessary (and unchecked, prone to illegal discrimination) for companies that define and identify companies. Undoubtedly, during the Covid-19 pandemic, companies have discovered what is possible to ensure that how pivintem can be opened to meet the access needs of disabled workers.

Unfortunately, all that was learned seems to have been lost. A few years later, many employers eliminated entry practices, enforced compliance with threats of termination, and adopted other punitive measures to limit the competent workforce. AbiteMitiv is hurting us.

3. No sector is against inequality.

It’s all too common to make the boogeyman of unequal, unequal, hostile workplaces. I spent most of my career in mission-driven organizations. Early in my career, I worked as a teacher and administrator in Maguter schools. I spent five years in the global health and development sector. And I worked at a startup focused on women. Each organization based its work on a progressive mission for capital, but it did not free these areas from discrimination, insults and conspiracy and abuse.

Institutions that conflict with their mission can undermine some of the authenticity of our mission-driven work. Instead of reporting an estimate, it breeds cynicism—not just one institution, but the entire sector.

Validation is not just who we are, but what we believe: our mission and purpose in our careers. We need to integrate practice and policy across sectors to better understand workplace inequalities and their effects on all workers.

4. Being more original cannot change the culture of the company.

Every employee – any person – wants the space and security to be theirs. We want to express ourselves without guaranteeing who we are. This is especially true for employees who have been discriminated against based on historical and active identity.

Organizations often define authenticity with markers of difference. These accumulations of identity may include hairstyles, clothing, pronouns, accessory objects, religious paraphernalia, or the words we speak. But inclusion takes more than just wheelchair ramps, pronunciation pins or inclusive dress codes.

“We want to express ourselves without guaranteeing who we are.”

As employees, we exchange time for talent and wages. Wage theft, inequality, workplace fragmentation, technological and managerial surveillance, occupational segregation, racism, sexism, and other forms of structural violence have larger institutional ramifications than wage theft, which manifests itself in our professional lives. Individual acts of self-expression, narratives of authenticity, defend unfair and illegal labor practices that perpetuate workplace discrimination.

5. The community is our greatest resource.

Employee Resource Groups (ERGS) are employee-led personality-based groups that provide a formal channel for communication and collaboration. These groups are “sponsored” by employers, so they are supported and sometimes funded. Ergs are for the marginal and early workers of a lifetime. Regardless of our rank, department, office location, state or region, we turn to Ergs for a place that belongs to us. As corporate Dei programs evolve, more than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies today have active Ergs.

I’ve always found the “Resources” part of the staff resource groups a little interesting. Who are the resources? As employees, carving out for ourselves is as much a business as any space. Organizations rely on Ergs to support their large workforces, demonstrate their commitment to diversity, and comply with Federal EEO mandates. Ergs helps organizations attract and employ more people of color, women, and other marginalized professionals. Our seasoned practices serve critical parts of the business function: responsive readers, product innovation and PR damage control.

Does ERGS have the ability to encourage us, as employees, to be our full, authentic selves? Can Ergs provide safety for workers in the form of labor protection?

Ergs are representative projects. By design, their ability to provide substantive labor protections is limited. Ergs appear as a union, but the organization “does not deal with” behavior. They cannot negotiate terms and conditions of employment. They cannot hold, act or represent collective employee grievances. They cannot engage in any collective bargaining with the employer. No organization-sponsored task force is structured to truly empower the workforce. To be more authentic, we need a community, a definition of authenticity that goes beyond the project of protection and representation.

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This article originally appeared The next big idea club magazine and is reprinted with permission.