Private Lives and Professional Lives

“Employees should keep their private lives and personal activities as separate as possible from the workplace.”

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading. 

There are two basic components that the opinion focuses on to separate from workplace: private lives and personal activities.  

I support separating private life from workplace in the sense that one should not allow personal prejudices or interests to affect productivity or take decisions against the interests of the company. However when it comes to sharing personal information with your colleagues, I am not against it as long as it is done in good taste and takes into account the other person's cultural background and preferences. In fact I feel such sharing can encourage camaraderie and may be good for team bonding at the end of the day.

As far as personal activities are concerned, I feel that the only concern of the company should be the output of the employee and that he is not having any negative impact on the company culture. A company must understand that an employee spends one third of his life in the office and it is impossible for him to not do any personal activity in workplace. Giving employees flexibility keeps them happy and makes them productive. It also fosters loyalty.  As long as the employees meets their targets and are present in the core meetings, I have absolutely no problem with personal activities.

Concluding, I partially disagree with the stated opinion. To some degree it is desirable to separate private lives and personal activities from workplace. However cutting them off completely without taking into account employee's performance and his needs can have a negative impact on the workplace, employee morale and team spirit.