Hey, work family is not a real family

So you have just called all the staff together and sung happy birthday to an employee around a cake.

The employee in his thank you speech talks about his “work family”. A few weeks later, you retrench that staff member to cut costs. Suddenly your staff regard such occasions as false, and you a hypocrite.

As the recession starts to bite, this scenario won’t be uncommon. And it is causing people to question the true meaning of office culture, and unravel all its confusions and contradictions.

Author Alain de Botton, in his new book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, has shadowed everyone from accountants to biscuit-factory workers in order to examine what makes work, well, work.

He says that a lot of company cultures are a little bit creepy, because they are trying to suggest that the company is like your friend or like your home.

And he says this is “creepy” because it’s quite obviously not true.

This is a thorny issue for entrepreneurs whose success depends on building a highly motivated, committed and passionate team, highly focused on building the future vision. They don’t have the money for huge salaries so they use their own emotional energy to build a culture of familiarity and fun. They often have lunches, drinks, massages, and days out with staff that create a friendly environment.

But the problem here isn’t that employers create a creepy false culture. It is the employees who lack the social IQ to understand that at the end of the day it is still work. There is a contract between worker and employer that essentially is an exchange of money for labour.

It is not false or creepy for the employer to then take that contract and turn it into a fun, engaging workplace where people can happily spend their eight hours a day.

It is the fault of the employee who doesn’t have the emotional intelligence to understand the difference between a work family and a real family.