How to kill your employer brand stone dead: describe your organisation as a 'family.'
Want to know the fastest way to kill your attractiveness as an employer of choice stone dead? Describe your workplace culture as a ‘family.’
You’ve seen the ads, you may even have been one of those running them with the call to action of ‘Join our family.’ If this applies to you, then stop. STOP! Right now.
Your organisation is a team that has been hired to perform a role for the greater good of the organisation. It is a community, a fraternity, a collective of people all working together in line with the organisation’s overarching goals.
I’ve hired people in the past who have come from broken families or simply didn’t particularly get on all that well with them, so don’t try to position yourself as a ‘family’ that they might wish to join. Your company is not a family and people aren’t looking for a new one either.
The brilliant organisational psychologist and writer Adam Grant talks about this with Airbnb CEO Brian Cheksy in a TED interview. Cheksy said:
“[We] used to refer to ourselves as a family, and then we did have to fire people or they’d have to leave the company… you don’t fire members of your family.”
[Watch online on Spotify].
‘Sell’ your organisation for what it can offer people. The best companies focus on how they support the individual needs, motivations, and aspirations of the people who work for them. In other words, they address the what’s-in-it-for-me-if-I-work-for-your-organisation’ question.
If you need guidance on how to position your organisation to better attract the talent you need, get in touch. We’ve worked with over 100 recruitment and HR businesses since 2014.
