Remember as a kid, having to wear that uncomfortable school uniform every single day? We were told when to sit, when to stand, when to eat, when to play, even when we were allowed to go to the toilet. Myriad rules to crush us into oppressive obedience!

Now imagine a similar scenario in your workplace. Employees are given insultingly basic commands and training that even the most sheltered individual would have learned simply in the school of life. There’s a term for it: Workplace Infantilisation. Workers denied their agency and wisdom from experience in favour of child-like over-proceduralisation. And no, workplace infantilisation is not a term for child labour, pathological smuggling of employee’s children into the office, or a worker boasting an adult diaper fetish.

Infantilisation in the workplace is basically when your boss treats you like a child. Explicit instructions for straightforward tasks, insinuating that you don’t have the common sense to figure it out. They make rules for things that well-adjusted adults don’t need rules for (like you’re not allowed to masturbate on someone else's desk.) Well duh. You use your own desk; we’re not animals!

But is workplace infantilisation genuinely happening on a significant scale? Or is it merely a vent for worker frustrations over the minutiae of bureaucratic tape?

SOURCES:

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Understanding the concept of workplace infantilisation
03:02 Harvard Business Review claims
04:37 Language, tone and building trust
07:41 Reality check: Is workplace infantilisation just a feeling?
09:21 Being an adult is understanding context
11:30 Defining infantilisation: Treating someone as a child
14:54 Controversial symptoms of workplace infantilisation
16:45 What does Google Scholar say?
20:01 Evidence of workplace infantilisation
23:11 Context matters

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