Why You Should Avoid Cheating or Mistreating Your Employees

Burger King Trying to Handle Social Media Crisis

How can three employees, a smart phone and a social website throw a major company into crisis mode? You might want to ask Bryson Thornton, director of global communications for Burger King Company.

Bryson Thornton and his team have been doing damage control since a picture of an employee standing in lettuce went viral. The caption read, "This is the lettuce you eat at Burger King."
The photo was originally posted on the site 4Chan, an imageboard website that allows users to post and comment anonymously. The image outraged enough people on 4Chan that they used the photo's geotagging to identify the store as the Mayfield Heights, Ohio location.

Soon social media was flooded with comments and shares and the franchise with calls from angry customers and inquiring media. By the time Burger King communications could spring into action, the picture had gone viral, and global news outlets were covering the story.

Bad Image
Brand strategists define a brand as the emotional connection you create with your customer and the space that you occupy in their minds. It is impossible to think of how a picture of an employee standing in food about to be served to customers can create anything other than plain disgust. Therefore, the Burger King brand and the emotions created by this image are forever linked in consumers' minds.

Once the photo spread and Burger King corporate became aware of it, they immediately issued a statement, which said:

Burger King Corp. has recently been made aware of a photo that shows a Burger King restaurant employee violating the company's stringent food handling procedures. Food safety is a top priority at all Burger King restaurants and the company maintains a zero-tolerance policy against any violations such as the one in question.

While the statement is well worded, timely and reaffirms Burger King's policy on food safety, it cannot erase the image from customers' minds.

How do you treat your employees
The modern reality is that people share even the most intimate details of their lives. Things that weren't said decades ago are regular conversation on social media today. And the information is being sent via social network sites within minutes and can expose your company unfairness.

An employee that is bitter about his workplace can suddenly become a public relations nightmare. All it took to spawn the Burger King crisis was a simple image shared on one site.

Angry employees, who feel that they are being cheated by their own employer because they are not being paid overtime, do not get breaks, work long hours and are not being compensated, or are being abused, can now go on social media and expose the malpractise of a company.

With the power of social media, I would think twice before I cheat an employee. Employees can not only expose your company's bad practice, but they can also go on social network and bad mouth your company. they can pretend to be just anyone and give a bad review on sites such as Yelp etc...

With the significant damage that can be done to a company through social media, there is no getting this genie back into the bottle. It has become the way in which Millennials or Gen Y prefer to communicate. In fact, many manage their lives though social media.

The reality is that companies can't silence employees anymore. In fact employees have enormous power and can greatly damage the reputation of a company that does not abide by the law. Just imagine a lawyer that stumble across an information that expose your company that violates the law. That lawyer could easily contact your workers and easily convince them that they should sue you.

You can bet that Burger King will be considering how they could have avoided this incident. So if you are thinking about making more money by cheating your employees, you may want to consider the consequences if one of them decide to expose his anger to thousands or millions of people. Is that worth it? You decide.