Individual experience and shared boundaries in working life

Satu Edberg
Feb 10
6 min read

As I write this article, I notice myself returning to the same thought again and again. Should I add disclaimers? Those just-in-case paragraphs in which I explain in advance what I do not mean before I dare to say what I actually mean. That this is not an argument against taking discrimination, racism, harassment or other serious misconduct seriously. There can and should be no compromise on those issues. Yet this very need for caution feels like an essential part of the phenomenon that inspired this article. If every discussion must begin with a pre-emptive explanation, we are already quite far into a world in which evaluating shared structures is easily perceived as an attack on an individual’s experience.

The tension between individuality and community

The idea for this article arose from Liisa Keltikangas-Järvinen’s recently published book Itsekkyyden aika, or The Age of Selfishness. The book is not about working life or HR, but it provides language for a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly visible in workplaces. Individuality has long represented freedom, opportunities and rights. Gradually, it has also begun to turn into a demand. Everyone is expected to listen closely to themselves, avoid discomfort and refuse to compromise. The result is paradoxical. Shared norms used to feel restrictive, but now excessive individualism has become the source of pressure.

In working life, this can be seen in situations where shared rules are readily perceived as restrictions and an individual’s experience increasingly becomes the starting point for demanding an immediate external solution. At the same time, HR is expected to demonstrate both understanding and firmness, react quickly while following a careful process, and combine situational awareness with equal treatment. Because HR operates within the framework of employment law obligations, this is not only a question of workplace culture or wellbeing. It is also a question of the legal protection of both the employer and employees.

When therapeutic language enters the workplace

One of Keltikangas-Järvinen’s most interesting observations concerns the way in which principles associated with therapeutic discourse have spread into wider public discussion. In a therapeutic setting, all emotions are real and valid, and the professional does not impose norms or value judgments. This is a virtue in care work. Working life, however, is not a therapeutic space. It is a shared system that also contains right and wrong solutions, obligations and boundaries.

In practice, this can be seen in workplaces when an experience begins to define the act itself. If something feels bad, the situation is interpreted as being wrong. Proportions become blurred, and matters are increasingly assessed according to how they feel at that particular moment rather than what actually happened and how similar situations have previously been handled. Working life cannot, of course, be a place where emotions are ignored. However, if responsibility for emotional regulation is outsourced to the system, HR and formal processes, the system begins to become overloaded.

This can be seen in everyday HR work, for example, when an employee feels that they have been treated unfairly after a supervisor has made a normal management decision. The issue may concern work schedules, the allocation of responsibilities or feedback that does not feel pleasant but does not breach the law, a collective agreement or the organisation’s internal policies. Even so, there is often an expectation that the experience must lead to a formal investigation and a documented process. HR must balance between identifying a genuine legal protection issue and recognising normal friction in working life.

Equal treatment and the principle of reasonableness

The employer’s obligation to treat employees equally is not a matter of opinion or an operating model chosen by HR. It is a legal requirement. This means that individual solutions cannot be made in isolation from the wider context. Every exception also creates a precedent, and every precedent shapes what other employees may reasonably expect.

For this reason, HR often faces situations where an employee’s experience is genuinely negative, but no legal error has occurred. No one has breached the law, an agreement or an internal policy, yet the employee still feels distressed. The natural human reaction is to think that the experience itself must be enough and that a solution should be found quickly. However, if every experience results in a burdensome process, the consequences begin to become disproportionate. This is not because the experience should be dismissed, but because these processes have been created to protect employees from serious misconduct and arbitrary treatment.

Reasonableness is a surprisingly difficult word in this discussion. It is easily interpreted as coldness, even though it is actually a form of responsibility. Reasonableness means ensuring that consequences are proportionate to the conduct in question and that different situations are handled using different tools. Not every disappointment is an injustice, and not every uncomfortable experience is evidence of inappropriate treatment. Working life inevitably includes conflicts and frustration, and the ability to compromise is a social skill without which a community cannot function.

Empathy and fairness

At this point, it is worth challenging one of the strongest assumptions of our time. We have begun to confuse empathy with fairness. A solution that feels empathetic in an individual situation is easily assumed to be automatically correct. In working life, this can lead to situations where one individual’s experience overrides the wider context and the position of other employees. Empathy without boundaries is not neutral. It may become unfair to others. From the perspective of employment law and the workplace community, fairness sometimes also requires decisions that feel uncomfortable.

What does this mean for the workplace community?

The overemphasis of individuality does not undermine a workplace community through one major crisis. It happens gradually. When exceptions become routine and solutions appear to be made on a case-by-case basis, trust erodes. Employees’ legal protection is largely based on predictability. If practices change from one situation to another depending on who expresses the strongest experience, equal treatment is placed at risk and the shared foundation disappears.

HR has a particular and often uncomfortable role in this. HR is expected to support the individual, but its task is also to protect the functioning and fairness of the community. Boundaries are not set against employees. They are there to protect them. Without boundaries, working life becomes a continuous negotiation over rights and positions, which ultimately burdens everyone.

The disappearance of shared responsibility

Perhaps the most difficult question is whether working life is moving towards a situation where individual experience begins to displace shared responsibility. At this point, it is worth looking beyond working life for a moment. In the world of sport, it is self-evident that disappointment cannot be removed through a system. Defeats, failures and setbacks are part of development. They are not seen as disruptions, but as part of learning. The ability to tolerate discomfort, process disappointment and return to the task is an essential skill.

It is reasonable to ask why this idea feels so difficult in working life. Why has the ability to tolerate disappointment become an almost disappearing resource precisely in an environment where people work together and inevitably encounter conflicts? If every form of discomfort is addressed through external measures, the community does not become stronger. It becomes more fragile.

Defending what is shared has become surprisingly radical. Yet working life cannot function without shared rules, boundaries and reciprocity. The interests of the community are not opposed to the interests of the individual. They are a precondition for them. When this is forgotten, working life begins to reinforce the very phenomenon it is trying to correct. Keltikangas-Järvinen argues that our culture now rewards behaviour that would previously have been regarded as immature. Emotions are allowed to spread regardless of time and place, compromises are seen as weakness, and setting boundaries is interpreted as a lack of empathy.

And that brings me back to disclaimers. I cannot resist including one. This article is not an argument that individual experience is irrelevant. It is an argument about what happens to working life when shared structures begin to give way to individual experience.

Sustainable working life is created when experiences are heard, but decisions are also made on the basis of the community, equal treatment and reasonableness. There is nothing inhumane about this. Quite the opposite. This phenomenon does not yet appear in the same way in every organisation, but that is precisely why it should be discussed while structures and operating practices can still be strengthened in a controlled manner, rather than only once they begin to fail.

If you are considering how these boundaries, structures and principles of equal treatment should be assessed in your organisation, please get in touch. The Folks team can support you with both HR work and employment law matters. Learn more at: https://www.legalfolks.fi/ulkoistettuhr and https://www.legalfolks.fi/tyooikeus