What do you think about a business that promotes itself as being like a family?
Asked by
airowDee (
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November 20th, 2010
Often time, you might hear from an employer or an employee that they treat their co workers like family members, which is implying that they work as a team and that they support each other while at work like family members do with each other.
I often feel very jaded and cynical about this kind of comparison because I know so many business that do not really give a chance to anyone who cant perform immediately , they would not even give someone the chance for a job if they don’t come to work
picture perfect.
I often speak straight from the heart and even though it is not smart, I have a hard time stopping myself from doing that even at work, and that is frowned upon. I feel that my job experience is nothing like a family experience and I find that when an employer say it treats their workers like family is very phony.
I wonder what are your thoughts on this issue..
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9 Answers
I doubt it works well, except in a very small business. I would take any such announcement with a grain of salt.
I think that would only be true if they are all family. Plus not all families are nice places to be.
I think @YARNLADY is correct and I would also think that a big company means you are like family in that you will be important to them if you give up your biological family and give them every waking moment.
A small business has day care, sick leave, hopefully a decent wage and or perks.
I like it better when my employees say I treat them like family. They really are the only ones who can evaluate how I treat them.
I would suppose it’s a marketing ploy to conjure up warm feelings of “family” within potential customers, complete with the warm sugar cookie smell of Grandma’s kitchen.
On the other hand, I’ve worked places where they treat us just as abusively and dysfunctionally as my own family, so perhaps they mean it. :)
It depends. Certainly, it is possible – I’ve felt close to a couple of employers myself. I think that part of my success at not getting fired comes from a tendency to relate to senior management much as I do with my own parents, and middle management as I do with my friends.
In the case of, say, S. C. Johonson (“A Family Company), the “family” part refers to the way that the business is owned by the Johnson family. I think.
If you’re hearing that from employees rather than the employer or from the company’s advertising campaign I would think it has a better chance of being true. Employers can say and think whatever they want but if employees feel that that is the way they are being treated then it could very possibly be the way the company is run. Not all companies are owned and managed by greedy devils. Really, not all of them are.
Well, it is your work family not synonomous with your real family. Companies like SC Johnson, mentioned by @Nullo, are not public companies answering to stock holders, and can run their business as they see fit, without pressures from the outside about bottom line, and indeed it is family owned. But, there are publicly held companies that are run with heart and private ones that aren’t, there is not a generalization that fits all companies.
In English we give words multiple meanings, this is just another instance. I remember a jelly once commenting that we use war language for too many things. War against drugs for instance. That in other languages they leave war for real battlefields.
I agree with the promotion simply due to the fact that when we’re working 8 + hours a day, we’re spending more time with our co-workers than we are with our real families. May as well make the best of it..If you can’t be with the ones you love..Love you ones you’re with.
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