Indians have an unusual relationship with the word family. We celebrate it, depend on it and, every now and then, survive it. Families are where we find our strongest support — and, occasionally, our most enthusiastic unsolicited advice. They are also where an uncle you’ve met exactly twice feels perfectly qualified to pronounce on your career, marriage, and investment strategy.
It was only a matter of time before Corporate India discovered the commercial appeal of the word. There comes a moment in almost every annual town hall when the founder, having unveiled ambitious targets and an inspirational video featuring drones, children, and sunrise shots of the company headquarters, pauses for effect and declares: “We are not just an organisation. We are a family.”
The audience applauds, though the finance department guys quietly wonder whether this means salaries will now be determined by parental affection.
The trouble with the family metaphor is not that families are bad. It is that families and companies are designed to do completely different things. Families exist to protect their members, but companies exist to achieve a purpose. One is built on unconditional affection and the other on mutual obligation. Confuse the two, and strange things begin to happen.
Resignation Conflict
Take the modern Indian office. The promoter becomes the family patriarch. HR plays the role of the aunt who knows everybody’s business, and Finance is the stern uncle who believes reimbursement claims reveal moral character.
It all feels reassuring — until someone resigns. Until yesterday you were Employee No. 4173. The moment you accept another offer, you become “like a son”. Then follows the inevitable conversation: “After everything we’ve done for you…”
And if the sentimental appeal to “family” fails, the vocabulary changes. Overnight, you are no longer a valued member of the parivar but something close to a deserter. Never mind that the relationship ends only after you pay your way out by buying out the three-month notice period. Families, one had always assumed, do not charge an exit fee.
The family metaphor performs its finest work during periods of inconvenience when there is a product launch or a client crisis or a quarter-end close. Suddenly everyone is asked to “pull together”, “own the outcome”, and “go the extra mile”. Curiously, the extra mile is almost always in the direction of the office.
Or consider leave. The company proudly declares that family comes first. But if you apply for three days off for your cousin’s wedding, HR behaves as if given sufficient authority, it might ask the bride to upload her Aadhaar before approving the application.
The irony is that the companies most admired by employees rarely describe themselves as families at all. They think of themselves as teams.
That is a far better metaphor. Good teams care deeply about one another. They coach, encourage, argue, celebrate victories, and survive defeats together. But they also understand that players leave, careers evolve, and someone accepting a better offer is not committing an act of emotional treason.
Professionalism, it turns out, is perfectly compatible with kindness. Perhaps that is what many companies occasionally forget. Warmth is not the opposite of professionalism. You do not need sentimental metaphors to create loyalty. People stay because they are respected, paid fairly, trusted to do good work, and treated like adults. They leave when those things disappear — not because the office stopped being “family”.
So by all means celebrate birthdays; organise cricket matches; send flowers when someone is unwell; mentor young colleagues; and build workplaces where people genuinely enjoy turning up on Monday mornings.
But just stop calling it family. Families ask for unconditional love; companies should settle for something far more valuable: Mutual respect.
And if your boss still insists that everyone is one big happy family, smile warmly and ask just one question. “Wonderful. Does that include equal inheritance?” The answer, I suspect, will end the discussion.