You Are NOT an Employee
Most of you are employed by some company, some organization, some government institution, or otherwise. If you aren’t now, chances are you have been at some point in the past. I even bet you don’t think a thing about being called “employee” of your company.
I would like to put a moratorium on the word “employee” because it sucks balls.
I’d wager that everyone and their dog has been forced to read an “employee handbook” or participate in “employee training” or aspired to be “employee of the month.” We here at Must. Be. AWESOME!! believe that this is a terrible appellation for those of you who are in fact employed by a company. It is the most generic, dehumanizing term possible with which corporate leaders, owners, and human resources people can refer to their workforce. And the idea behind this term, while seemingly innocent, is in fact not awesome. Nay, this ugly word is LAME.
Anyone can be an employee. Corporate training manuals, ethics programs, and all other retarded drivel instituted to keep you in line refers to you as merely an employee: a small cog in a big wheel. Chances are, even if you’re working somewhere you think is badass, you’re still referred to as an employee by someone higher up on the food chain. You may even have a cool sounding title like “Ant Wrangler” or “Strategy Executive.” But you’re still just an employee.
Despite how well-meaning a company may be, especially in this startup-rich landscape In Our Foul Year of the Lord 2009, eventually all the people – the humans - organized under a company get referred to or lumped together as that company’s employees.
I despise this word. It deconstructs the AWESOME of a person. It boils everyone down to a level of retarded standardization. It homogenizes and restricts. It steals innovation and courage. And most of the time, no one comprehends that this word can be so destructive.
I hereby challenge every business leader, every CEO, every HR department, EVERYONE who institutionalizes the term “employee” to come up with a better alternative. Hunt that word down in your manuals, your training videos, and elsewhere, and murder it. Replace it with something creative. Something fun. Something that inspires your people. Something that will make them proud to be employed by you. Something AWESOME.
Startup CEOs, you have no excuse. You’re probably starting out with fewer than 5 people. Agree from the get-go that there will be no employees… but find an apropos yet AWESOME term to describe the types of people you want to attract to your brand.
Furthermore, I implore all of you are now or have ever been called employees… SPEAK! What would you like to be called? What word would you like to use amongst you and your fellows to describe you as a group or organization? What term makes YOU feel AWESOME about what you do?
Sound off in the comments section. Let’s see what kind of creative replacements we get.
{For some additional AWESOME reading about alternatives to employee nomenclature, check out this article, “The chaos theory of leadership” from The Financial Times.}
[Image by Blogowski.]
The point of said “event” was to purportedly discuss strategic and tactical issues involved in U.S. government communication. Quite a few familiar and some new faces were on the panels, to include Rosa Brooks from DOD’s Policy shop, Daniel Sreebny from the State Department’s Global Strategic Engagement Center (GSEC), public diplomacy scholar Kristin Lord, some old guy from SOCOM’s Strategic Communication Directorate, and a Congressional lawyer that made me want to commit seppuku on the spot.
