Walking the Walk? Staff Effort, Founder Spotlight

By The Reasonable Adjustment | October 9, 2025

Kieron JH LinkedIn post announcing Homepage Narcissism critique — *Kieron JH announces the original Homepage Narcissism article.*

When we published Homepage Narcissism: When Charity Sites Become Founder Shrines, we argued that charities should shine the spotlight on staff, not just founders. When a founder’s profile dominates the homepage and LinkedIn feeds crowd out the team, it is an organisational red flag, not just a branding quirk.

The Recruitment Junction homepage dominated by founder LinkedIn feeds — *Exhibit A: The Recruitment Junction homepage at time of writing. Founder’s LinkedIn posts front and centre, staff largely invisible.*

Less than 24 hours later, the founder of The Recruitment Junction posted a LinkedIn update cheering on her team as they walked 15 miles from Newcastle to Durham for charity. Her contribution? “Cheering them on (from my desk, for shame 🫣).”

LinkedIn post by The Recruitment Junction’s founder, staff walking for charity while founder posts from desk — *The Recruitment Junction founder’s post: Staff do the walk, founder narrates from HQ.*

When the Timing is the Punchline

You could not script a more telling example of the disconnect. The staff literally “walk the walk” while the founder tells the story and keeps the spotlight. This is exactly the dynamic that Homepage Narcissism critiqued: a charity’s public face shaped by founder presence, while the people who move the mission forward do so out of frame.

Let’s be clear: the staff deserve all the respect. They are the legs of the organisation, doing the hard miles in rain and wind. The founder gets the post, the team gets the blisters. That says everything about where credit lands and who is missing from the homepage.

I do wonder if walking 15 miles for the founder’s LinkedIn PR campaign is part of the job description in their contract. Or is that just an “other duties as required” clause?

Staff Are the Brand, Not Just the Labour

This episode underlines a core point from the original critique: if you stripped away the branding, the charity would still stand because of its staff, not because of who is holding the LinkedIn mic. In any organisation that claims to champion “second chances,” that should be the easiest lesson of all. Show the world the team that makes it possible, but not for the purposes of engagement farming on social media.

Want the receipts? Here’s the full original article that started this, with all the design breakdowns, signals, and fixes for founder-itis. The screenshots above serve as real-world evidence of the homepage layout and leadership priorities at the time of writing.