Don't build a corporate culture like a family.

Family culture can increase employee engagement in a business, but on the contrary, it also poses many risks to the organization.

“No matter how much you love your employees, don't treat them like family,” says Brian Chesky, CEO and co-founder of Airbnb.

Brian Chesky noticed that many companies tend to build a family culture, promote employee bonding, provide free food, gyms, coffee shops..., with the desire that employees spend more time at the company than at home.

This strategy can help employees be happier and more productive, but at the same time, it will make it difficult for founders to make decisions when necessary, such as cutting staff due to the impact of the epidemic or economic recession.

“We used to call each other family, and then we had to fire people, whereas if you were family, you wouldn't fire each other,” said Brian Chesky.

Scientific studies also show that building a corporate culture of “we are a family” can reduce internal monitoring capacity, in which employees tend to cover up for each other and not report wrongdoings of colleagues to superiors.

In the 2019 National Business Ethics Survey, 45% of respondents said they had witnessed misconduct in the workplace, but about a third did nothing. Some of the reasons for this were camaraderie and concern for coworkers, rather than the desire to report it.

So, the best model for building a corporate culture, according to former Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, is to develop like a football team. There, each employee must fight to win, which means keeping his or her job. If they don’t try their best, any employee can be “replaced”, or worse, removed from the team.

In a TV game show about careers, Mr. Hoang Nam Tien, former Chairman of FPT Software, currently Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors, FPT University (FPT Group) also supported the view of building a corporate culture like a football team, rather than a family.

“A company is like a family, it sounds very cute. Sometimes, the bosses will use that song to talk to employees. But that is a family for good children only. A family is like a hand, with long and short fingers. If unfortunately one of them makes a mistake, in a family, we still have to protect and raise him, we cannot kick him out of the house. However, a company must be like a football team, from top to bottom, we must strive our best in every 'match' to keep our position. No matter how good Ronaldo plays, if he does not score in 3 matches, he will be relegated to the bench. Therefore, a company must be like a football team, not like a family,” Mr. Tien affirmed.

Source: https://baodautu.vn/khong-nen-xay-dung-van-hoa-cong-ty-nhu-mot-gia-dinh-d225203.html