Despite the recent (current) economic cooldown, skilled workers are still highly in demand, and talent shortages are still a problematic reality for most employers. For example, in the U.S. there are 30% more open jobs than people looking for jobs. A recent ManpowerGroup global survey on hiring practices indicates that 75% of employers worldwide have difficulties filling open roles.

This means that skilled professionals are still in the driver’s seat. If your talents or potential are in demand, in the sense that you are good at doing things that organizations desperately need you to do, you will be spoiled for choices.

That’s why we’ve seen a rise in organizational perks such as flexible hybrid or unlimited work-from-home opportunities, a four-day workweek, or Michelin-star employee canteen. Yet the employers’ offer to bring your whole self to work is among the most recurrent corporate “carrots” dangled in front of prospective recruits.

This may be because of its universal and irresistible appeal, which invites current and prospective employees to merge their professional and personal identify, to feel free to behave without formal constraints or inhibitions, and to display the full spectrum of their identity, values, and interests at work . . . no matter how awkward, eccentric, or unconventional.

The superficial appeal of this proposition signals a commitment to diversity and inclusion, erasing the historical boundaries between work and fun, inviting people to be themselves, and identify with their work persona.

Consider that when employee engagement was first proposed as a concept (25 years ago, in what is arguably the most successful PR rebrand of the much older concept of job satisfaction), it was defined as employees’ identification with their work persona.

Think of the strongly engaged worker as the opposite of Marx’s notion of the alienated worker: someone who clocks in and out and stops living at work, only to regain it when not at the factory or office.

And yet, there are three reasons why a company’s best employees may not be interested in bringing their whole selves to work. If you want to attract high performers, you are better off telling them there is no pressure to be themselves, bring their whole selves to work, or worry about being authentic.

IT IS THE LAST THING EMPLOYERS PROBABLY WANT

Just because someone encourages you to be yourself or bring your whole self to work doesn’t mean they actually mean it. It’s a bit like when people tell you that you don’t have to take off your shoes at their home, while they are in their slippers. Or that you don’t need to bring a gift to their wedding or children’s birthday. Any literal interpretation will turn you into a selfish, socially unskilled, or antisocial friend.

As our systematic empirical research into the drivers of career success and employability highlights, what employers actually want is your professional self, meaning someone who excels at the tasks they are given, and contributes favorably to organizational citizenship by treating others with respect, and making an effort to be likable, predictable, and rewarding to deal with.

Is the encouraging nudge to bring your whole self to work restricted to people who fit the status quo or are a good culture fit? Now consider that people who have been historically marginalized, ostracized, and discriminated against for being at the more infrequent end of the LGBT+ spectrum, may not truly feel encouraged or free to open up to others if their company culture is still biased, prejudiced, and traditional.

Contrast this with someone who excels at being unconventional and unusual thanks to attitudes and beliefs that may be extremely disruptive to the status quo. For example, would you want someone to bring their whole self to work if that includes attitudes that may be seen as fascist, sexist, racist, ageist, or elitist? If the answer to this question is too obvious, then how about someone who is Republican, Libertarian, pro-life, pro-gun, anti-vegan, a climate change denier, anti-vaxxer, etc.?

IT IS EXTREMELY UNUSUAL IN TOP PERFORMERS

When it comes to assessing someone’s potential for a job or role, there is an extremely robust science to rank order or rate someone’s likelihood to add value to a role or organization and get promoted to higher levels of seniority.

Leaving aside the obvious (and politically incorrect) determinants of success, such as privilege, socioeconomic status, and nepotism, what makes someone more likely to deliver for their employer and advance their career boils down to learning ability (IQ), drive, and people skills.

People skills require someone to not bring their whole self to work. Instead, what is needed is for them to be tolerant, open to other people’s values and preferences, and have the ability to make sacrifices so that their selfish beliefs and egocentric agendas are put to the side, in the interests of their colleagues’ needs and well-being.

WE ALL INHABIT MULTIPLE SELVES

Unlike fish or squirrels, humans are complex beings. With that comes the ability to inhabit multiple selves, or have multidimensional identities. Even our personality is agile and adaptable enough to elicit only the relevant behaviors in each situation or context. There’s no single dimension of life calling for the totality of our self or identity to be manifested.

Your whole self includes your darker tendencies, your guilty pleasures, and a specific range of views, ideas, and beliefs that only a few people have learned to accept, let alone love. If your idea of a job is somewhere where you can simply unleash your unfiltered and uninhibited opinions and views on others . . . good luck getting a job, let alone maintaining it.

Your whole self is someone who perhaps four or five people in the world have learned to love, or at least tolerate, and not for the entire duration of the Christmas or Thanksgiving lunch. Everybody prefers the filtered, edited, and curated version of you, with all the bad bits out and the good bits amplified.

If you need to be told that you are in a safe place and you can just be yourself, then you are probably not in a safe place. That is, if someone must insist that you can trust them, that they will like you whatever you do, and that you are free to do whatever you want or like, then you are probably not in a trustworthy environment. Trust is earned rather than received as an obligation.

Perhaps most notably, employers have no business in snooping on their employees’ private lives, forcing them to expose or display personal or private aspects of their beliefs or identity, or forcing people to merge their personal and professional reputations.

Even if you love your job and have a spiritually fulfilling career (which does not happen to the vast majority of humans ever), there is more to life than work. The opportunities to express multiple, nonwork dimensions of your identity are better in your hobbies, sports activities, social ties, friendships, and romantic relationships.