In 2005, the year my dad passed away, his employer Ford Motor Company had approximately 300,000 employees. I mention this because his generation of workers probably experienced what it meant to feel like your job was your family. You literally had your family and neighbors at work with you.

For almost sixty years, American auto companies were almost untouchable from an economic standpoint. So much so that in my hometown, most people either worked any of the three shifts at The Big Three: Ford, Chrysler, or GM. These jobs were so popular that Detroit became known for the 24 hour hair salons to accommodate the women who had to work outside of regular shop hours. Those jobs were reliable, allowed you to afford your middle class lifestyle and take care of your family, and were usually generational activities. It was so easy to get your kids jobs then.

In 1980, the vulnerability of this industry showed its head. For the first time there were massive layoffs and unit sales dropped significantly. Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors spent the 1980s closing factories and decimating the UAW, whose ranks had reached 1.5 million at their peak in the 1970s. Workers in Detroit spent decades believing the deal was mutual. Then oil prices spiked, Japanese competitors showed up, and the "family" restructured without them. This meant conflicting workplace culture definitions, no more loyalty to someone because you likely didn’t even know them, and no more going above and beyond to ensure people at work had what they needed. The companies needed what they needed. By the time foreign acquisitions fully arrived, the workforce had already been conditioned to accept that loyalty only traveled one direction. This was just the auto industry. There are so many more industries with the same story.

That didn't mean companies stopped trying to jerry-rig this concept to create a shortcut to engagement, retention, and loyalty. Tech booms had beer pong, games, chefs, and on-site everything to simulate a "familial" environment so you could work there more often and longer.

When the economy is great, the employee perks and benefits reflect that familial tone. When the economy isn’t great, those benefits and perks (ahem Deloitte with your most recent benefits shift) get reduced. Sometimes workers aren’t even aware when those reductions are happening or that they are tied to a booming economy. This is the first time, in my lifetime, that the concept of "we are all family here" proved to be a dying trend of the past.

But we don't need to be family for there to be trust and loyalty. I'm not even sure why we jumped to families to begin with. If you've ever taken a workshop with me, you've heard me say that we are a collection of communities and not families. Community members retain their privacy as much as necessary but they try to take care of each other within the boundaries they set.

I came across this Instagram video with the incredible video with Amber Grimes and THE Durand Bernarr that really resonated with me. Why do we feel the need to jump to the closest group on the trust ring whether that’s family or friends when all the other rings are just fine for us work and collaborate?

My friend Minda Harts is a bestselling author and a workplace trust consultant. Her latest book deals with exactly this. Talk to Me Nice: The Seven Trust Languages for a Better Workplace is a framework for turning trust from an abstract value into a measurable business asset. She breaks it down simply: too many promises have been broken in the workplace. High-trust organizations outperform low-trust organizations by up to 286% in total shareholder returns, in case anyone needs a business case for that. And believe me, as a DEI operator I am very familiar with needing one, which frequently saddens me since doing right by people should just make sense on its own.

There are organizations that think, in this current environment, workers' feelings aren't a high priority. I would caution those orgs to not get too far ahead of themselves. Workers are also customers with long memories of how they are treated. And as we have seen since the American economy was invented, there is not one state that stays the same. We went from family-centered to parent-company centered, to technology-centered, to employee-centered, back to technology-centered, and we are guaranteed to move on to something else even if we don't know what it will be yet. Why take the chance and treat your workers like they don't matter?

According to a Careerminds survey (February 2026), 35.6% of companies that conducted AI layoffs rehired more than half of the workers they had let go, including one in three employers who spent more on restaffing than they saved from the layoffs. Companies like Klarna replaced hundreds of workers with AI, watched quality decline, watched customers revolt, and quietly hired humans back. You cannot automate your way out of the need for human judgment, trust, and institutional knowledge. You’ve also heard me say you can’t outsource critical thinking to AI. You still need people.

This the perfect time to stand out and authentically develop your people. Being proactive by providing leadership, developmental, and operational training (you can always hire me or my friend dani herrera or both!) that doesn’t promote false relationships as a basis for engagement or retention. We are not family but we are a community of colleagues, associates, and maybe even sometimes friends depending on our boundaries but we don’t need to be close in order to achieve our business goals in a safe productive environment that makes room for all of us.

It’s not recent but it’s recently needed! Rhona Barnett'-Pierce’s Workfluencer podcast has a line up that people should really pay for. I got to talk about the art of storytelling — not just as a skill, but as a strategy. From content writing to authentic recruiting narratives, she shares powerful ways to bring humanity, voice, and purpose into the hiring process.

We explored the role of storytelling in talent acquisition, why it matters more now than ever, and how anyone — yes, anyone — can begin crafting stories that connect, persuade, and influence. If you've ever wondered how to elevate your content creation, sharpen your storytelling skills, or become a trusted storyteller in talent acquisition, this episode is your gateway.

You can catch the whole podcast here:

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