Can banning some corporate terms and replacing them with buzzier or more positive-sounding alternatives do any good?
Apply for a job at Davio’s, a small chain of Italian-style steakhouses in the US, and you’ll never hear one extremely common workplace term: employee. That’s because CEO Steve DiFillippo has banned its use.
“I think ‘employee’ is an awful word,” he says. “Who wants to be an employee? It just isn’t something you strive toward.” Instead, those who work for DiFillippo are known as ‘inner guests.’
“A lot of servers and cooks go from restaurant to restaurant trying to find their way; we stop that,” he explains. “They come here and realise they’re in a different place where they’ll be treated differently.”
For DiFillippo, banning the word is both a way of empowering his ‘inner guests’ and explaining the company’s core values to its ‘outer guests’ (the diners). (Continue reading)
