When companies or team leaders overemphasize the family metaphor, the next step is asking for a family-level commitment from employees. And this creates a lot of opportunities for leaders to take advantage of employees. 

One project after another gets taken on, without ...

The intention behind labeling a company as a family might have been positive — organizations and leaders desire a strong culture made up of employees who are bonded to each other and who push each other to new levels of performance.

But what’s wrong with just calling that ...

In a modern economy, work is never done. The only way to ensure that people stay productive in a way that’s sustainable is to make sure every employee enjoys downtime as well. 

More and more companies are experimenting with ways to reinforce boundaries such as forbiddin...

Many of the organizations that emphasize being a family end up taking actions that blur the lines between work and life for their employees. 

This was seen much more often before the pandemic when companies touted free food, dry cleaning, happy hours, and all sorts of ameni...

No matter how committed a company’s employees are, most of them will eventually move on. New opportunities present themselves, life changes happen, and so do plenty of other reasons for employees to look elsewhere. In the face of this inevitability, treating departures like betra...

When companies overuse the word “family,” the results are rarely positive. Indeed, Pushing for family levels of commitment can actually do damage to company culture and morale.

Calling your company a family may be a well-meaning metaphor, but it’s not useful. Most emplo...