Don't Provoke a Pity Party

Today's Wall Street Journal story about the CEO whose "Pity City" comments provoked outrage after a viral TikTok premiere is yet another cautionary tale about the instant infamy social media brings to an employer's gaffes.  For those unfamiliar with the latest virtual water cooler chatter, a furniture company's CEO, in what turned out to be an errant effort to distract the employees from the company's failure to meet financial targets to fund a bonus pool, suggested during a town hall that the employees "leave pity city" and instead focus on the matter at hand (working harder to make the bonus by achieving the company's financial goals).  Her comments quickly went viral as the most recent example of executive tone-deafness. And that tone deafness takes on particular significance for a public company with its trove of easily accessible and very public executive compensation information. In this instance, the crowdsourced social media conclusion was that the CEO, from her cushy compensation perch, was in no position to lecture the masses about money. This instance, as the article points out, is just another example of how quickly an off-the-cuff remark can go off the rails - and how difficult it is to soothe the social media storm. While employers may wish information shared in open employee forums to be kept within the company, the reality is that employees have many platforms to air public grievances.  And when that information goes viral, it is impossible to recall it. It is hard to criticize the compelling reasons to conduct all-employee meetings because open communication instills trust. But social media has amplified miscommunication in our workplace. So this new paradigm of instant and viral judgment reminds us that employee communications -- no matter how or why they occur -- must be conducted as mindfully as other important business communications.