"It’s Not Personal": Why We Need to Stop Using These 3 Toxic Workplace Phrases
There are a few phrases I've heard throughout my career that have always made me uncomfortable. "It's not personal" - typically said to someone going through a redundancy process. "This is a neutral act" - said about a suspension, as though the person on the receiving end should somehow feel fine about it. "We're just following the process" - as if the process existing makes it okay to stop treating someone like a human being.
I understand why these phrases exist. There are legal reasons, process reasons, and I'll be honest, I've used them myself. When you're managing a formal process, language matters and you're often trying to be careful. I get it.
The more I hear these phrases from clients though, the more wrong they feel. Because what they actually do, whatever the intention behind them, is make the person going through it feel like they're not allowed to have a reaction. Like their feelings are an inconvenience to the process rather than a completely understandable response to a frightening situation.
Redundancy affects your income, your identity, your routine, everything you've built around that job. A suspension means going home not knowing when you'll be back, what your colleagues have been told, or how this ends. These are not abstract events happening to a file on someone's desk. They are happening to a person, and that person is scared.
You can run a fair, legally sound process and still acknowledge that. You can follow every step correctly and still recognise that the person sitting across from you went home last night and couldn't sleep. Doing so doesn't make you less professional. Refusing to do so just makes people feel invisible.
Process and humanity aren't mutually exclusive. They never have been. We've just somehow ended up treating them like they are, and that's worth questioning.
If you're going through something at work and you need some support from someone who knows the ins and outs of workplace processes, that's what Klar is here for.
