LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman reveals the biggest lie your employer tells you - and you tell them

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It’s your first day at a new company.

Your manager welcomes you to “the family”. He says he hopes you’ll be with the company for many years to come. You return the compliment and reassure him that you never plan to leave.

But then you go to the HR department, where you learn about a 90-day probation period and a caveat in your contract that means that even after 90-days, you can be fired at any time.

Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, has written a book about the “fundamental disconnect” of modern employment – where companies expect commitment without offering job security, and employees say they are loyal but leave when a better opportunity arises.

The employer-employee relationship is based on a dishonest conversation, according to Mr Hoffman, that results in employers continually losing valuable people, while employees fail to fully invest in their job because they are looking for better opportunities.

Mr Hoffman said that trust in the business world is at an all-time low. Gallup, a polling company, says that 70 per cent of workers in the US are not engaged in their work.

In ‘The Alliance’, co-authored by entrepreneurs Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh, Hoffman says we need to stop thinking of employees as family or free agents, and instead think of them as allies.

The alliance should be based on a “tour of duty” or a mission which is mutually beneficial to employee and company and can be completed in a realistic period of time.

“Like lifetime employment, the tour of duty allows employers and employees to build trust and mutual investment; like free agency, it preserves the flexibility that both employers and employees need to adapt to a rapidly changing world,” Hoffman advises.