We treat our staff like family around here!

By. Mr. Peter Coleman 
Director at Aegis Interaktif Asia Pte Ltd

How many times have you started a job, or even been for an interview and the CEO or someone of a similar level says "We treat our staff like family around here". It is of course a stupid statement to make for a whole host of reasons. You might hear other trite phrases like "My door is always open" or "We want our staff to cherish the leadership". None of this is backed up by any description as to how it is going to be achieved.

But it's the first statement that should make those little alarm bells ring in the back of your head. On the one hand it may feel to you that you are going to be welcomed into the family, sharing holidays, birthdays, anecdotes about the children or grandchildren, swapping photos from holidays and of your dogs and cats. However you may want to take a reality check and try and find out if their family actually like them.

Depending on the age of the boss or bosses and their children you might try and do some amateur detective work looking for Facebook and other social media sites to see if your potential new boss does actually have any sort of social media presence and if so how much his or her family appears in his or her feed. Now not everyone has Facebook and other social media accounts so you need to become an amateur sleuth and do your own investigations. You may find out that the children don't even like or live with the parents. You may find out there are some dark secrets lurking in the depths of the familial relationships. 

Certainly for me the next time someone tells me they treat their staff like family I shall probably feel very sorry for the staff and wonder what they did to deserve such bad luck.

The point of this story? Listen to the subtext of what is being said. Why would it be necessary for someone to make these kind of statements if it were in fact true and being practiced by the people making the statements. So if you hear these phrases "We treat our staff like family", "my door is always open" or other strange and inane utterances you should probably listen to that little bell ringing and make for the door and the next interview.