Thursday, October 27, 2011

Employer bashing on FB

In recent times I had observing the trend of people expressing candid negative opinion on social networks about their family, school, colleagues and employers. Recently an irritated top executive remarked that its the era  of 'Facebook Heros". He said "In a country obsessed with heros, both real and card board, this type of FB heros seems to be a new breed".

From the individuals perspective they argue that when suppressed, social networks had given them a tool by which they can make them selves heard and also retaliate against the might of cooperate power. For them, social network has become the place where they let off the steam, vent their aggression, get some sympathy and most importantly seek attention!

On the other hand there are countless number of stories where cooperates, when under attack from an employee on social network has waved BYE BYE to employees. In other circumstances, people had complained of strategic victimization of the individual by the superiors from the day of publicizing on social networks. Another segment of cooperates complain about the loss of trust and ethic from the individual. Some reckon that if its such a big issue and if the individual wants to 'wash dirty linen publicly' they do not have the moral right to stay with the company. As a counter argument I had heard people say that 'exposing' on social network is the modern form of whistle blowing, hence the whistle blower should be treated with an open mind.

Like in any topic it does have two sides to the coin. But from, how I see it, social networking is evolving and both the employer and employees need to mature to accept the realities of the new era. Cooperates should wake up to the new realities of the new form of freedom of expression and interpret these comments in the context of the situation and learn to handle them appropriately.  Individuals should realize that with great power comes great responsibility, bashing too much can work counter intuitively and it doesn't always enhance the reputation of the individual with the rest of the people and if over done, instead of getting the seeked attention would eventually loose face.

1 comment:

  1. - I seriously have no opinion on these things. I rare write anything bad about employer (unless if I chose the selected people in my list). just cos I think I get paid for my behavior outside too! Its part of our job description ... People may have their own reasons do such stuff .. I don't think there is anything good or bad here .. just that we like or dislike this .. I know a close friend got fired here in Aus just for making a fb status "Fuck you ... PM!!!" ... luckily I didn't need facebook to tell it out .. ha ha ha ;)

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