When it comes to the workplace, it can be a real jungle out there, so let’s talk about it.
Take Amazon.com, for instance.
According to a New York Times article titled “Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace,” “the company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers to get them to achieve its ever-expanding ambitions.”
I have heard anecdotally from a couple of people over the years that Amazon is a tough place to work, but I don’t claim to know its true culture and I won’t speculate on the veracity of the allegations made in the piece. The contentions include: “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 the company boasts are ‘unreasonably high.’ ”
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was not pleased with the article to say the least. According to Geekwire, he told his fellow Amazonians,“I strongly believe that anyone working in a company that really is like the one described in the NYT would be crazy to stay. I know I would leave such a company.” Others, like journalist Jeff Jarvis, say the article lacks balance.
A little background: The New York Times says Amazon declined to grant an interview with Bezos for the story, and the Times’ Margaret Sullivan did conclude in its “Public Editor’s Journal” that “No serious questions (to my knowledge) have arisen about the hard facts. That’s to The Times’s credit. But that may partly be because the article was driven less by irrefutable proof than by generalization and anecdote. For such a damning result, presented with so much drama, that doesn’t seem like quite enough.”
What struck me more than the article or the note Bezos wrote to his staff telling workers that they could email him directly about any problems they might have encountered, was Nick Ciubotariu’s response.
“Nick who?”
He is an Amazon employee, and he loves his company — so much so that he decided to post a lengthy LinkedIn Pulse post rebutting the Times’ reporting. He did this on his own without, he wrote, being asked, and so far it has generated more than 1 million page views. Good for Ciubotariu, and good for Amazon.
In an update to the piece, Ciubotariu wrote, “Someone internal actually emailed me this morning, and asked if I had contacted PR ahead of time, and if I had seen the social media guidelines (the answers were no, and yes).”
Sigh.
This, to me, is a problem with some companies. I understand the need to deliver a consistent message and have policies in place to protect the company, but getting every missive “cleared” also creates a culture where workers are afraid to speak. Would you really require someone to get approval before posting a LinkedIn message defending your company? If yes, then there’s trouble in paradise.
Years ago I met an engineer from a large electronics company at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The digital camera market was still in its infancy then, and he explained to me why, for most people, buying high-megapixel cameras was a waste of money. Logically, unless you’re printing 16-inch photos, there’s no reason to spend extra money for a 16-megapixel camera.
It seemed like excellent advice that I wanted to share with my consumer readers.
I kept contacting him to set up a formal interview. He canceled or postponed it a few times. When I finally got ahold of him near my deadline, he told me I should go through the company’s PR department. He had become concerned that talking to me would upset some of the higher-ups. Maybe he’d reveal something that the company didn’t want people to know.
Shutter.
If employers are truly fearful of what their employees are going to say about the company or their products, that’s a problem. If a worker is offering up misinformation, set the worker straight. If an employee recklessly reveals confidential information whether through the media or social media, then there should be a consequence, especially if it was done intentionally.
Set a policy explaining that workers must add a disclaimer explaining their views on social media are not necessarily those of the company’s if you must, but trust your workers to stay on point and offer the constructive criticism you should crave. Most people will do the right thing and give you a glimpse into their world in your company — something HR and C-suite executives don’t always get to see.
Keep your policies in place, but there's no need to muzzle your workers because you fear the words of a few bad apples or that a message could be skewed. To paraphrase Bezos, I strongly believe that anyone working in such a company would be crazy to stay.
James Tehrani is Workforce’s assistant managing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Tehrani on Twitter at @WorkforceJames and like his blog on Facebook at “Whatever Works” blog. You can also follow him on Google Plus.