Enthusiastic consent is for healthy workplace / employee relationships too


Since repatriating to Australia from Norway in early 2023, finding stability in both housing and work has been a grind – hundreds of applications sent, very few interviews and a couple of false starts.

To blow my own horn a little, for someone with a stacked CV, a track record of delivery across sectors and cultures, and a swathe of positive reviews / performance assessments in my path, this has left me questioning so. many. things.

One that repeatedly comes up is ‘we employ on merit / you have to jump through some extra hoops’, and I’m left thinking well what was a PhD and all that work worth then? Did you just not read the CV?

Another is repeatedly applying to the same organisation for different roles, only to be rebuffed 100% of the time. For the latter case, I wrote a public post celebrating a rejection number in double figures and announced that I won’t be applying with them again. Enough times no is enough right?

This reminded me of enthusiastic consent. In our personal relationships this is extremely important – it is the cue we need to progress in any way. Seeking and granting enthusiastic consent is how we avoid toxicity and imbalance, it is how we let people know ‘yes! we want this’ in a healthy way.

The same applies for work. Workplace relationships require enthusiastic consent, especially in the ‘is this going to work at all’ phase – aka recruiting. When you assemble your best self and send it off to a potential new relationship, and the result is ‘hmm maybe we need to test you some more’, this is the start of a relationship which will always be imbalanced. It isn’t enthusiastic consent, it is a conditional arrangement in which you are required to give up your power.

These are at best just mercenary arrangements – at the end of the day, not worth your energy over and above the minimum required to execute the contract and get paid. Why would you bother voluntarily feeding an energy vampire in any relationship, much less one which wants to consume you for the fun part of most days?

Maybe it just reflects old attitudes where years of bum on the same seat is the KPI, rather than effectiveness in the role? That whole ‘one year of experience 20 times’ vs ’20 years of experience’ thing.

At worst, it’s a sign of a toxic workplace where people in comfortable positions don’t want to be perturbed by such trivialities as accountability or actually making a decision.

If you’re a workplace, give enthusiastic consent to the people you want to hire. “Just one more thing to reassure us” sets the scene for, signals that the whole relationship will be “just one more thing and we’ll accept you”. Personally speaking, after a career of proving my worth my public track record is there, in all kinds of ways. You can either see it or not. And if you don’t see anything of value, another test isn’t going to change that.

Needing money is a thing, mercenary relationships are fine too, as long as it is completely clear, well defined. And expect that employees will be simply mercenaries – giving exactly as much as the paycheck is worth, no more. In this relationship, you as an employer don’t have their full attention – if a mercenary arrangement that pays better, is easier, is more convenient arises, they’re gone. And they’re already on the lookout. That’s just how it is, if that is the relationship you set up.

If you’re an employee, well, we do it for money right? There’s a career point at which we have a lot more to give – and working toward that is one of the points of gaining experience and education. In this case, the workplace you want is the one which says ‘yes!’. The one which makes space. The one which isn’t going to constantly demand more in order to be accepted. The one which enthusiastically consents.

It’s certainly what I’m looking for…