Disengaged Employees
What do you think of the image above of a disengaged employee rant?
I have blogged before (even yesterday) about how employees are the new customer – but sometimes no matter what your intentions are as a manager, you will have an unhappy customer. Wrong person, wrong role.
Personal blogging and social networking sites are an amazing tool – but are we educated enough (or even ‘civilised’ enough) to use them for good and not for evil? Cyber bullying is rife.
Organisations do have rights too. Defamation is a crime. Employees may well have a voice (as do customers), but using that voice to bully or belittle will not get them anywhere in the long run.
Ironically, at RedBalloon we see Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Flickr as tools of the trade to build our brand reputation and let people know us better.
In fact, if you want to see how we use these in our marketing communications, then follow.
I think situations like this are happening all the time which is why we need to stress the importance of having a clear social media policy in place- individuals need to be conscious of what goes up on the internet because it can't be erased.
In saying that- Part of me really believe that social media is all about the dialogue. Like organisations- individuals get the chance to respond to comments like this. These sorts of comments are happening anyway at the water cooler (and who knows- Maybe this guy was a tool to work for and he needs to get some feedback on how to manage people more effectively?) the difference is by seeing them online you get a better look at what has been said and can choose how to respond. Perhaps there is also a learning opportunity in there for the manager as well.
On the other hand, you are right. Things like this could be considered defamation if the manager's reputation was injured. However, she didn't say who she worked for or who her manager was...
It's a very grey area at the moment but an interesting space to watch