Pink Floyd on “Corporate Creeds”
While we’re all familiar with Mission Statements, employee manuals, and cheesy team-building meetings; Offer Letter Creeds with a required signature take it too far.
Marketing vs. Mind Control
An attempt to regulate the personal core buy in values of an individual is marketing. That attempt imposed upon a workplace by a company is simply put, an attempt to manipulate its work force for its own ends and profits. We all know this, it happens everyday…that’s business.
Wrapping it up in a pretty bow entitled “Corporate Creed” is just window dressing. As shifty as marketing methods can be (I should know, as an marketer with a psychology focus), general suggestions and sales pitches inviting a person to ascribe to a value system still leaves the final choice to the consumer. That free choice is what builds loyalty.
Orwellian Offer Letters
Surely this idea starts with the good intentions of getting everyone to play nice together. Unfortunately, people lie and people forced to lie will resent you.
The proposal of forcing an individual to sign a legally binding offer letter document with an arbitrary “Corporate Creed” stipulating any recruited employee’s required core mental state and behavior, is in essence, attempted personality control with legal penalties for non-compliance. Yikes! (I know!)
Any employee worth their salt will recognize this as company workforce manipulation. Corporate Creeds can be used for Corporate Greed.
Making a new hire’s employment contingent upon signing away their personal freedoms to secure a job, regardless of their comfort level in doing so, is Orwellian.
Forcing signatures across the board could breed an undercurrent of resentment towards your company in those workers with misgivings about a mandated Creed.
As Pink Floyd so delightfully put it, “We don’t need your mind control… Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone.”
