NEW YORK – By now you’ve probably read, or heard mention of, an August 15 New York Times article about Amazon, a harsh account of a company culture where “workers are encouraged to tear apart one another’s ideas in meetings, toil long and late (emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not answered), and held to standards that the company boasts are “unreasonably high.”
Former employee Bo Oslon told the newspaper how he saw nearly every person he worked with “cry at their desk,” while marketing employee Noelle Barnes relayed a saying often heard around the company’s Seattle campus: “Amazon is where overachievers go to feel bad about themselves.” The Times leaves few stones unturned, from a prevalent gender gap to a non-existent work/life balance, and ultimately paints a very unappealing picture of one of the world’s most recognizable brands.
One day after the New York Times article, Amazon’s Head of Infrastructure Development, Amazon.com Search Experience (SX) Nick Ciubotariu, came to his employer’s defense on LinkedIn. He countered the “toil long late” comment, noting that in his 18-month tenure with Amazon he has never worked a single weekend he didn’t want to. “No one tells me to work nights. No one makes me answer emails at night. No one texts me to ask me why emails aren’t answered. I don’t have these expectations of the managers that work for me. …And if these expectations were in place, and enforced upon me, I would leave.”
He said/she said aside, Forbes chimed in with an observation about the “end of traditional crisis management PR as we know it,” in respect to the speed at which the Amazon story spread and who the rebuttal came from, as in not Amazon but a passionate, Millennial-aged employee who used social media to defend his employer.
“Maybe this is the dawn of internally crowdsourced PR or collective expressionism—whatever it ends up being called, this is a perfect example of a company losing control of the narrative,” wrote Forbes. “Amazon, by not responding Saturday afternoon, is now in a situation where an employee’s response that was published within 24 hours of a news story is grabbing serious online attention.”
But is that so bad? Well, yes. Amazon lost control of its own narrative, and in doing so, it also ceded ground within its public relations strategy to the public, or in this case to an employee on his own time and accord. However, this exact situation could be the beginnings of an emerging PR strategy where companies are more forthcoming about employees speaking their minds.
“You want your employees talking positively about your company,” wrote Forbes, adding that younger employees frown on the idea that they should sit back and let their employer be dragged through the mud without waging a powerful defense. But most companies would probably agree that an effective PR strategy is not to “release the hounds” when disaster strikes.
“This situation does present a difficult conundrum; if you let everyone loose, you will have no control and things could go sideways. If you try to squelch everyone, you may hurt your positive outreach or, worse, you may find this strategy completely ineffective,” wrote Forbes.
A realistic option, the news source continues, is to teach employees how to respond online and when it’s appropriate by creating “a culture of PR. …Provide them with internal outlets where they can express opinions and guide them on where to publish. Whatever you choose to do, you can expect more employees to start expressing opinions and emotions about your company—not less.”
From the editor: The NACS Public Relations Toolkit (PDF) provides an overview on effective PR tools—from how to write a press release to industry fact sheets to suggestions on how to hold media events. By implementing some basic public relations strategies and gaining some additional exposure for your efforts, you will be able to more successfully attract consumers to your store, increase sales of your marketed items and improve the reputation of your store and your brand.