Life Outside Of The Workplace

When discussing the ethics of the hiring process, gender, ethnicity, and religion are often rightly labeled irrelevant factors when it comes to workplace competence.  It is obvious why these are considered irrelevant: they have no inherent impact on the quality of one's work.  No one performs better or worse in a given professional role simply because they are a man, a woman, and so on.

Despite this, many are still expected to meet arbitrary requirements for "professionalism" outside of the workplace as they hold their jobs.  These expectations are not about ensuring the quality of their work, but they are instead about pressuring people to bow to petty, subjective preferences of those inside or outside of the company.  Those expectations vary depending on what subculture surrounds the worker, but the more conservative or liberal a person's community is, the more likely they are to be told to comply.

What might some of these ostracized behaviors be?  Responsibly using alcohol, sharing nude pictures of oneself, using profanity--each one of these activities, which are amoral in themselves, could devastate someone's reputation in certain circles.  This, in turn, could impact their reputation at work, which might then influence how they are treated in their professional lives.  Encouraging this gratuitous cycle is to implicitly hold that one's life should revolve around one's occupation.

It is not workers who engage in morally permissible pursuits who are being reckless and irrational, but those in or outside of their firms who expect their entire lives to revolve around the insignificant preferences of others.  No one should not have to worry about innocent behaviors that have no relevance to their occupations leading to them getting fired or shamed at work--or slandered outside of the workplace.

When hiring someone, all that immediately matters when evaluating a candidate is his or her character and skillset.  This leaves no room for hiring based upon arbitrary preferences about amoral things.  In the same way, as a company member becomes more established in their firm, the only things about their personal life that have any relevance are whether they have done something irrational or immoral.  Nothing else matters, regardless of how upsetting an action may be to a community of inept thinkers.