How LinkedIn’s feature can affect our resilience and self-worth

“Congratulate Bob on five years at ACME Marketing” popped up in my feed yet again. What’s this about? And what are the unintended consequences for our resilience?

LinkedIn’s feature that encourages users to congratulate their connections for their length of service in jobs has unintended consequences for our resilience and brings up a deeper discussion about our conditions of worth.

Why Does LinkedIn Offer This Feature?

LinkedIn introduced this feature to create engagement between users and generate a positive experience on the platform where otherwise we would probably never interact with that person.

In other words, they are trying to create ‘positive’ interactions. But not all praise is helpful.

So why should we care about this?

The Things That We Reward Become The Things That We Value

When we celebrate employees based on their length of service, we unintentionally reinforce the idea that longevity is a crucial factor in determining an individual’s worth and contribution.

Every time we see that prompt to congratulate someone, and see that they are being rewarded for staying in a job for five years, it just adds another reminder token into the notion that we should judge ourselves on how long we have worked somewhere. It also reminds us that other people will also be judging us on it.

It can create a condition of worth; something we use to measure our value as a person. And in this case it is neither a helpful nor healthy condition of worth.

We May Become Fearful Of Leaving Our Jobs

The emphasis on length of service can create a fear of leaving our jobs, even if they no longer align with our goals or provide fulfillment. The belief that starting over or seeking new opportunities will be seen as disloyalty or failure can lead to individuals staying in unfulfilling roles, resulting in decreased job satisfaction and potential burnout.

LinkedIn’s feature subtly perpetuates the fear of leaving a job and the need to protect our CVs, even when a position is not the right fit or the work environment is toxic.

This can be detrimental to our resilience and hinder our personal growth and happiness.

Send A Meaningful Message Instead

If you really want to provide genuine encouragement and support, it is more impactful to send a personalized message highlighting a specific time you valued something that they did or said.

A thoughtful and meaningful message will carry more weight, and be appreciated far more, than a generic “congratulations” message. Wouldn’t it be great if LinkedIn offered this as a prompt instead?