The speech always arrives the same way. A town hall. A slightly too-bright stage. A man in a quarter-zip with the sleeves pushed up to show he’s one of us. He’s not. His jumper costs more than your sofa. He pauses. He looks at the floor as if the floor has missed its targets. Then he says it.
“We’re not just a company. We’re a family.”
Everybody nods. Nobody believes it. A woman from Operations updates her CV on her phone under the table. She is the only one in the room who’s planning ahead.
A Brief Comparison
I have a family. I know how they work. My mother has never asked me to justify my existence in a quarterly business review. My father has never put me on a performance improvement plan, although he’s implied one since 1998.
Families do not lay off cousins because projections came in soft. Families don’t make you fill in a form to take Christmas off. And no family I know has asked its members to “do more with less”, then bought a sculpture for the lobby called Unity.
When a company says it is a family, it wants the loyalty of a family at the cost of a temp, and the exit of a stranger.
What They Actually Mean
There are similarities. In families, there’s one relative everyone avoids. In companies, his name is on the door. In families, people say “we’ll talk about it later” and never do. In companies, that’s the roadmap. In families, someone will cry at your funeral. In companies, someone will reassign your tickets before it.
At a family gathering, someone always gives a long speech about togetherness while everyone stares at the food. Which is exactly what’s happening at this town hall, except the food is three trays of wraps for 400 people.
A Modest Proposal
Let’s be honest instead. “We are a group of adults who do things in exchange for money, and will mostly be civil until we can’t afford you.” Put it on a mug. I’d respect that mug.
Gary won’t put it on a mug. Gary has a new slide. It says “One Team”. Behind it, faintly, I can hear the HR calendar loading. Tomorrow, 9am. “Update”. Gary won’t be on the call. Family never is.