When Your Staff Turns Against You with Social Media

We know by now that not everything in the social media space is positive.  Not everyone out there is going to sing praises about your company and your magnificent customer service, in fact some people will probably hate you and will voice their hatred toward you.  When this happens it’s important to remember that there is a way to deal with negative feedback.

BUT, what happens when the negative feedback and comes from members of your staff?  Tesco employees set up a little facebook group for themselves called “Tesco employees could rule the world,” and then proceeded their attempt at world domination.  The group is filled with lovely quotes such as:

“Give me your shopping list, you senile old cow, and I’ll do your shopping for you. Just leave me alone.”

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“I had a guy on Saturday … who complained about the prices of the reduced mini cucumbers from £1.29 to 64p. Hmmm, how expensive. Cheap ****!”

“I wish these f******s would just stay at home and shop online!”

The question in this situation then becomes what do you do?  A lof of companies don’t have time to deal with this crap and just fire employees instantly for any type of negative remarks, and why shouldn’t they?  If you were running a company that had employees speaking out against you wouldn’t you just replace them?

Employees should have a voice and perhaps should be allowed to air their frustrations and grievances but when it’s a public thrashing that begins to tarnish the company image then I say get them the hell out of the company.  You don’t want people working for you that you know don’t enjoy working there, that’s just common sense in my book.

Of course the ultimate decision for what to do with rebellious staff members ultimately rests within the hands of the company, but what are some things that companies can do to prevent such things from happening?

• institute a clear policy against public lambasting from employees on public forums
• have the company create a private forum for company complaints and grievances
• try to convert angry employees into happy employees (much the same way you would do with customers)
• when it happens the first time make an example out of the group to threaten any other occurrences (scare tactic)

what would you do?

thanks for reading!