DO YOU EVER get asked to donate money to your employer? My employer solicits donations from faculty and staff. Why should we pay our employer rather than just have our employer pay us? Because, supposedly, Brown University is also our community, and its mission deserves our financial support.

It is scarcely unusual for employers to represent their workplaces as communities concerned with each employee as a “whole person” and deserving of employees’ wholehearted loyalty. Such concern takes different forms in different workplaces but invariably sounds warm and fuzzy.

It can also have practical, bottom-line benefits for employers. Healthy employees have lower medical-insurance costs, so employers can benefit from setting up workplace physical-fitness facilities and introducing incentives — carrots and maybe sticks — to encourage good health habits. Workers often work better when their personal lives are on an even keel, so employers can benefit from Employee Assistance Programs to deal with employees’ personal and psychological problems. Workplaces often run more efficiently when workers get along well, so employers can benefit from promoting “team-building” exercises and after-hours socializing. Volunteer work outside the workplace often increases employees’ sense of common purpose and improves an organization’s public image, so employers can benefit from promoting that, too. Charity also often serves those two functions, so employers can benefit from soliciting employees’ charitable contributions to outside agencies, possibly through payroll deductions. And it is obvious how an organization can benefit from soliciting employees’ charitable contributions to itself.

Don’t employees also benefit from good health and a harmonious workplace? For example, when organizations reward employees for participating in fitness programs and raise health-insurance premiums for smokers and the obese, doesn’t everyone benefit from these incentives for better health habits?

Well . . . no. People who cannot stop smoking or overeating hardly benefit from paying more for health insurance, nor do those who could stop if they wanted but have made a reasoned decision to let the pleasures of smoking or unrestrained eating override the medical risks.

An employer’s power introduces potential for coercion even in programs that are not intentionally punitive. When a supervisor refers an employee to an Employee Assistance Program, will the employee feel free to ignore this? Will the counselor feel free to discuss the possibility that unionizing to bargain for better pay and working conditions might reduce stress more effectively than jogging or meditating?

How voluntary is volunteer work when workers feel that failure to participate might count against them? What happens to employees who opt for recreation with friends of their own choosing rather than after-hours socializing with co-workers? As for the payroll-deduction system of charitable contributions, this system can be a breeding ground for coercion, since employers can penalize employees who fail to demonstrate “team spirit” by contributing.

Maybe you like team spirit in your workplace. If you do not, it would be outrageous, especially in the current economic crisis, for a tenured professor like me to say that you should stand up for your individuality if it means risking your job.

But if you choose to take that risk or if your job is secure, you can make your own decisions about smoking, eating and exercising, assuming that you can afford the higher insurance premiums, if any, for miscreants. If you want a physical-fitness program, you can pursue one outside your workplace. If you want counseling, you can get it from an independent professional rather than from a counselor whose loyalties are divided between you and your employer. You can work with your co-workers, socialize with your friends, and keep your personal and professional life separate in the interest of a fairer workplace and more authentic friendships. You can get philanthropic independence by making charitable contributions independently of your employer.

And if your employer is asking to be an object of your charitable contributions, you can consider this suggestion from my mother: “Tell them that if they double your salary, you’ll give them half the increase.”

Felicia Nimue Ackerman, a monthly contributor, is a professor of philosophy at Brown University.