Your Job is Not Your Family
Business is not a family—and we should stop saying so. It undermines the meaning of both business and family. Instead of creating a high standard for management, it does the opposite.
Photo by Alex Kotliarskyi on Unsplash
Your Job is Not Your Family
Welcome to our company—we are a family and we’re glad you’re part of it!
You are not just a student here, you’re a member of the family.
Sorry to let you go.
Businesses, schools, banks, massive corporations, and small nonprofits often speak of their organization as a family. On the positive side, it’s an attempt to show employees, students, and members that they’re valued and not simply cogs in a machine. I think it also reflects the need we all have for a sense of meaning in our work, and as family and social bonds weaken, we often seek more purpose and community in what we do for a living.
But a business is not a family—and we should stop saying so. I realize this makes me sound like a curmudgeon, but it’s a bad idea on many levels. Rather than harmless sentiment, it’s a category error that can, in fact, weaken company culture, lead to institutional disorder, and encourage failure in leadership and management. It’s true that families and businesses are groups of people, but so is a pick-up basketball game on a Saturday afternoon and a democratically elected Senate.
There are at least three reasons it is a mistake to refer to a business, nonprofit, school, or any other organization or institution as a family.
First, it is not true and everyone knows it.
Second, it undermines the meaning and function of both business and the family.
Third, instead of creating a high standard for leadership and treating people well, it does the opposite.
1. Sorry to Let You Go
Let me begin with the obvious. Businesses and schools are not families, and everyone knows this. One might object that, if everyone already knows it’s sentimental corporate-speak, what’s the harm?
First, constantly repeating a falsehood cannot make it true. Second, it creates cynicism. In every corporate event where this is uttered, truth, sincerity, and the moral seriousness of leadership is put into question. It’s a small seed, but it grows. If leaders are willing to let sentiment rule over truth on something insignificant, will they have the courage to speak truth when it actually matters?
It also can create the conditions for resentment and anger. The fact that business is not a family becomes immediately obvious when someone gets fired or when 200 people get laid off.
“But I thought we were a family?”
You didn’t really believe that did you?
No, but why did you say it?
Businesses fire you. Families don’t fire you (as much as they may want to). In fact, except in very toxic situations, most families put up with behavior that no business or school would. Businesses generally don’t stand next to you during your hardest times. Nor would one expect them to. Families do, as do our closest friends. We may be fortunate to have a very good friend with whom we work, but that is an exception, and it extends beyond the business.
And if the difference between family and work is not obvious enough: we change jobs. While this can cause a bit of disruption, most companies are structured to go on without you. In radical contrast: if a mother leaves her family, we don’t just get a new one next week. As Vaclav Benda states beautifully, in
“all other social roles we are replaceable … whether rightly or wrongly. However, such a cold calculation of justice does not reign between husband and wife, between children and parents, but rather the law of love.”
Finally, families give you a chance to be yourself and grow. Some businesses and managers also want you grow, but they also want you to deliver specific, measured value. That is what they’re paying you for. It is a relationship of commutative justice. Families, on the other hand, practice distributive justice. (See my essay “Getting Justice Right Is Harder than We Think.”)
This is so obvious I feel strange writing it. But then again, so is the fact that a business is not a family, and try to count the number of times you hear that.
2. False Sentiment Undermines Real Commitment
The second reason why calling a business or school a family is a problem is that it distorts the understanding of both what businesses and schools are, and what a family is.
Families, schools, businesses, charities, libraries, and churches are all essential parts of society, each with its own telos—purpose and rationale. Conflating families and those other institutions does damage to them all…. Read more on the differences in the full essay here:
3. It Lowers the Leadership Bar
Calling everyone “family” does more than dilute the importance of your literal family. It can dilute the moral and social responsibility of businesspeople. Rather than creating a high standard for leadership and an incentive to treat people well, it does the opposite: Because it is impossible to treat your employees like an actual family, using this as a standard creates no standard at all. Because there are no attainable benchmarks, calling staff a family can easily become a substitute for building a supportive, moral, human-centered company culture, which is both necessary and distinct from a family.
Instead of calling a business a family, it would better to articulate exactly what you want your company culture to be—and say that as clearly as you can. This gives everyone something concrete to strive for and a standard by which success or failure can be measured.
For example…state clearly that you value truth and honesty in all actions, and create a corporate culture where everyone is encouraged and rewarded for telling the truth—to each other and to customers. I know a businessman who has implemented this in his company. No matter what: don’t tell a lie. If the order is late because you forgot, don’t say it got held up by the supplier…
Simple. To the point. You addressed what the mind encounters. To use the word family without delivering its meaning, is to claim something, while doing something else. The bubble in between is the tab paid usually by the needy. Language is powerful and stripping meaning out of it, while monetizing the expected benefit, is a shady collection that reflects poorly on the company.