What if your employees left their identities at the door every morning? Not just their keys and coffee — their values, their emotions, their sense of purpose.
That’s the premise of the Apple TV+ series Severance, where a mysterious corporation offers employees a surgical procedure to split their consciousness. The result? One half of their brain (the innie) lives entirely at work. The other (the outie) lives entirely outside of it. Neither knows the other exists.
It’s fiction. But it might also be your company — just without the sci-fi tech.
The Severed Workplace Is Real
At Co-hesion, we help organizations align people, leadership, communication, and culture to drive performance. And here’s what we’ve seen again and again:
Many workplaces have already “severed” their people — not surgically, but behaviorally.
Employees compartmentalize. They hide their humanity to survive in a culture that rewards compliance over contribution. They smile, nod, and stay quiet. Not because they don’t care, but because caring openly isn’t safe.
Leaders do it too.
They armor up. Speak in business clichés. Avoid vulnerability. Delegate culture to HR. All in the name of professionalism — and all at the expense of authenticity.
What We Lose When We Sever the Human from the Performer
In Severance, the psychological toll becomes unbearable.
In real companies? It just looks like:
Missed opportunities
Fake harmony
Slow execution
Employee churn that confuses the CFO
Culture doesn’t die in a moment — it erodes through silence. Through meetings where no one says what they’re thinking. Through onboarding that feels robotic. Through leadership that focuses on tasks instead of people.
Integration Is the Competitive Edge
Co-hesion believes the best companies are those where the innie and the outie are the same person.
Where employees are clear on the mission, and feel personally connected to it.
Where communication is tailored, honest, and effective — not just efficient.
Where leaders drive results by aligning, not controlling.
We call this reintegration — the act of bringing the whole person into the whole company.
It’s not soft. It’s not fluff. It’s how execution sharpens, retention rises, and strategy comes to life through people.
So, Would You Work for Your Company If You Had the Choice?
That’s the question Severance forces its characters to confront.
It’s also the question every leader should be asking right now.
If the answer is “maybe” — or worse, “only if I could sever the part of me that cares” — then something’s off.
The good news? You don’t need a fictional brain surgery to fix it. You just need to build a culture that’s worth showing up for — fully.
