"Colleagues"

[CotswoldsCamilla]

Why? They're not my colleagues.
Sainsbury's staff, Waitrose staff, BA staff - none of them are my colleagues.

I'm filling in a survey for a flight I took with BA the other day:
Overall service provided by British Airways colleagues at the airport : why not BA staff?
Is the term "member of staff" too demeaning these days. Are they trying to make poorly paid people in Sainsbury's feel motivated by referring to them as colleagues?

Now it's all "Can't find what you're looking for? Ask a colleague to help"
Is asking a member of staff demoralising?

Is it just me? Have I got too much time on my hands?

Totally agree!!

apparently according to google : The shift from "staff" to "colleague" is a deliberate corporate culture strategy designed to foster a sense of belonging, equality, and pride among employees.

The word colleague is fine but I think OP was making the point that a customer is not a colleague of the person working in the shop, restaurant or wherever. Your colleagues are the people with whom you work.

yes but it seems management has other ideas about the words meanings : The shift from using terms like "staff" or "employees" to "colleagues" in customer-facing roles is a deliberate, modern management strategy designed to alter the workplace culture and customer perception, rather than a reflection of traditional definitions

I work in a corporate role and I have been told that 'staff' is basically a taboo word now, it's 'colleague' in everything. It's nonsense and doesn't improve morale or fool anybody, but it's everywhere.

in that example they are not saying they are your colleagues, they are saying they are BA colleagues. Substitute the word “team”.

This isn’t AIBU; calm down 😉

Well quite however on one hand they want everyone to feel good about themselves with this “colleague” business but it doesn’t seem to be doing any good, does it? Every number I now call whether it’s the water board, the energy company, the council or the GP, they all remind me to be nice to colleagues. So the perception if anything, is worse, given that people need to be reminded to be nice to the colleagues.

Corporate strategies, gotta love them.
We will continue to pay our employees peanuts but calling them colleagues will make them feel better about themselves, plus appreciated and valued; they will then forget about the rubbish pay and zero hour contracts.

It’s just a word. They don’t mean they are YOUR colleagues.

Fast food places are often crew members. There’s also a school near us that calls their staff and kids crew members.

Ooh yes.
on the train it says to treat colleagues with kindness, no, I'm not going to be kind to them. They're not my friend. I will be polite.

Corporate comms person here. It’s to try and force low-paid employees to have greater acceptance of stagnant wages and increasing targets/demands by using language that suggests we’re all in it together. Meanwhile, exec think customers will be more polite if we use ‘colleague’ as it sounds less subordinate. All v coercive.

So if you're in 'corporate comms' and rightly think that it's regressively coercive then why not use your position to try and influence change?

No one is fooled and it makes people lose respect for people who use this sort of bullshit language.

Language doesn't pay bills or stop overworked employees from being stressed and feeling exploited.

That's because increasingly members of the public, customers, behave like arseholes to people they consider to be subservient to them, particularly if they don't get their own way over something, which may be their own fault, but is always someone else's responsibility to fix. The language is a more polite way of saying, "Don't swear or threaten violence dickhead".

As with all of these PC things, it's Commie talk. Ignore and proceed as usual and/or preferred.

Because someone working in corporate Comms is a small cog in a big machine, just like someone in HR, Finance or IT. You might have a chance to discuss and advise Directors here and there, but the real decision-making is done through all the usual infrastructure like Boards, Senior leadership teams, CEO. They decide what suits the business and it filters down - Comms can't change that, it can only soften the blow. In my experience even Comms teams dealing with higher risk situations (eg. Press and Media Relations teams) have very limited influence over the message.