"We're a Family Here"

There are few sentences in life more sus than this one.

Whenever a company tells me this, I have the same instinct I have when a date tells I am the most handsomest man she has ever met. 

I smile politely and start looking for the catch.

Because families, as far as I remember, don't usually require you to update your goals on a performance management portal. They don't schedule a quarterly review of your contribution to the household. And I sincerely hope your mother isn't asking you to demonstrate measurable improvements in operational efficiency before she'll pass you the fish curry.

Companies, however, have discovered that calling employees family is a rather useful management tool.

It makes you feel wanted. It makes long hours feel noble. It turns working on a Sunday into a demonstration of commitment rather than a spectacular failure of planning.

And when things get difficult, it gives someone the opportunity to remind you that everyone needs to make sacrifices.

Funny how the sacrifices are rarely distributed equally.

For a while, it works.

You stay late because the team needs you. You take the call during dinner because the client is important. You postpone that holiday because the launch cannot possibly survive without you.

You tell yourself it's temporary. You're building something. You're part of a team that cares.

And sometimes, that's true. Good managers exist. Good teams exist. I've seen people go well beyond their job descriptions because they genuinely care about the people they work with. There is real value in that kind of camaraderie.

But caring about your colleagues and surrendering your personal life to a company are two very different things.

Somewhere along the way, we've confused the two.

The company calls it ownership. The employee calls it commitment. The calendar calls it another weekend gone.

Then the quarterly numbers arrive.

Revenue is down. Budgets are frozen. A new leader has arrived with a presentation about synergies, optimisation and doing more with less. Nobody quite knows what all of it means, but the slide deck has reassuring shades of blue.

And suddenly, the family is restructuring.

People who spent years building products, helping customers and holding teams together find themselves in a meeting that begins with, “This is a difficult decision.”

It usually is. Especially for the person who had no say in making it.

The same organisation that celebrated their dedication now explains that their role is no longer aligned with business priorities.

Apparently, the family has discovered accounting.

Let's be fair. Companies are not charities. They have to make money, manage costs and sometimes make decisions that nobody enjoys. A business that cannot survive will not be able to employ anyone, however lovely its values poster looks in the reception area.

People get that.

What they don't appreciate is being sold emotional loyalty as part of the employment package, only to discover that the relationship was strictly commercial all along.

A salary is a transaction. You bring your skills, time and effort. The company pays you in return. You can build friendships, find purpose and do work that matters along the way. Those things are wonderful bonuses.

But the transaction does not make you family. And it certainly doesn't give an employer a permanent claim on your evenings, weekends, health or conscience.

There is nothing disloyal about having a life outside work.

There is nothing selfish about refusing a Sunday meeting that could have been an email on Monday.

And there is nothing wrong with doing your job well without making it your entire personality.

Honestly, it doesn't need to be a family.

It needs to be a place where people are paid fairly, treated with respect, given room to grow and trusted to do the work they were hired to do.

A place where managers don't confuse exhaustion with dedication. Where difficult decisions are explained honestly. Where people aren't expected to perform gratitude for having a job.

And where the word team means something more than a collection of people who are individually responsible for absorbing the consequences of decisions made several floors above them.

You don't need to love your company.

You need to be able to trust it to keep its side of the bargain.

And if it does that well, you might actually come to love working there.

Which is a much better outcome than being told you belong to a family that can remove your access card before you've finished your coffee.

The next time someone says, “We're a family here,” ask yourself one question - Is this a family that cares about me, or a business that would prefer I didn't notice the difference?