Office Oversharing: Social Media’s Role in Defining the Corporate Culture of the Future

Not only are we an agency that’s immersed in the social media world for work, we are essentially a living and breathing embodiment of the oversharing culture that has come to characterize the online medium and its culture…

I was recently interviewed for a yet-to-be published article on office oversharing. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to scoop the reporter with this blog post—well, not intentionally.) During the interview, I espoused the virtues of sharing personal details and stories in the workplace: “We’re like a family!” “We all know so much about each other!” “Such freedom of expression! Such breeding grounds for creativity! Such connectedness to the people you see every day!” “Isn’t it wonderful?!”

Here, the reporter told me that of all the CEOs and executives she’d spoken to, I was the only one who actually advocated office oversharing. One guy—a publisher at a major publishing house—for example, went as far as to say that when his employees are getting ready to go on vacation, he gets annoyed if they tell him where they’re going.

Really?

I guess this is the part where I should step back and define “office oversharing” as it clearly means different things to different people. Take this publisher, for example: he would probably define oversharing as knowing anything about his employees other than those things that are directly related to their jobs. Me, on the other hand? I’m quite a bit more liberal, so there are virtually no boundaries to the type of information I’m open to learning/hearing about my employees (and people in general).

I’ll just come right out and say it: in our office, nothing is off limits. Nothing. We talk about relationships, family issues, last night’s awkward blind date, our dreams, fears, insecurities, you name it…  That doesn’t mean that that’s all we talk about.  Or that that’s how we spend most of our day.  But it does mean that in between getting work done, there are also moments to come up for air—and overshare. Put another way, it’s a way of blowing off steam, disconnecting for a moment, and recognizing the fact that we’re people, not machines.

My guess is that attitudes like the publisher’s will ultimately be selected against in the Darwinian scheme of things. Sure, it might not happen right away, but social media is very much engendering a culture defined by oversharing, and the breakdown of constructed private/public boundaries. The next generation(s) of employees, for instance, are growing up in an atmosphere that encourages and rewards the sharing of personal information, and as a result, they’ve come to crave the millions of small details that comprise life. This need for connectivity will no doubt make it difficult for them to adapt to or thrive in workplaces that are so distinctly out of their comfort zones. Instead, they’ll thrive in those work environments that allow them to freely express themselves and interact with their peers.  I imagine that more traditional workplaces (read: stuffy workplaces) will (and actually, already are) at first rebel against this shifting paradigm by trying to impose strict controls over employees, but mark my words: employers, not their employees, are going to be the ones who ultimately yield to this change.

You may wonder what I’m basing my assumptions on, which is totally fair since I’m a marketer, not a workplace expert or psychic. Let’s just say it’s a hunch. As a card-carrying member of Gen Y (yeah, I’m still pretty young), I’m basically prone to thriving in/enjoying the online world and all its unfiltered goodness. And having grown up in San Diego, I’m accustomed to a culture where people regularly have full-blown conversations with strangers. For these reasons, I’ve made it my job to infuse this type of authentic, transparent and real interaction into our office culture—or, at least, make it a place where employees can feel comfortable conversing at this level if they want to. We do have employees who are more private than others (and pretty much everyone is more private than I am), so while not everyone is an oversharer, we all thrive in a culture of honest authenticity and on balance are willing to endure the occasional resultant cringe-enducing overshare.  Should someone want to share a personal detail, problem or story during the work day, it’s very much understood that our culture will indulge in and even benefit from it.

The benefits of an oversharing office culture? Here’s what we’ve noticed:

• We’ve developed close team relationships as a result of our freedom of expression.
• Our team members don’t feel the need to compartmentalize their different “selves” for fear they’ll be censored by an office big brother. Their work selves are no different than their out-of-work selves or their other setting-appropriate-selves (well, not on our account anyway).
• The liberal culture we’ve established now shapes hiring decisions. (We’re a small company, so we can’t risk hiring people that don’t fit in. This essentially means no one who is easily offended; although they’re certainly not required to be oversharers.)
• Our oversharing office culture has resulted in loyalty and hard work because people like to be here, respect each other, and don’t feel judged for being themselves.
• We recognize that each person who works here has a lot more to contribute to the ongoing conversation than their marketing- and media-related expertise; they bring a whole world of experiences and observations with them, and these color our work and working life. Call me crazy, but I think that humans like to be treated as such.
• Not only are we an agency that’s immersed in the social media world for work, we are essentially a living and breathing embodiment of the oversharing culture that has come to characterize the online medium and its culture

As social media and real life continue to overlap and influence one another in profound ways, I think the last point is probably the most relevant to the workplace at large. In a nutshell, social norms are shifting swiftly and perhaps we are just early adopters of what will ultimately be a common work culture. (Hey, we’re evolved!)