Forum comments by ex employee

October 25, 2019 6:34 AM

An ex-employee is making unhelpful, inaccurate and potentially damaging comments about the company they were just laid off from. What's some ways to approach this?

I work for a small company who recently laid off a marketing person for what seemed to be appropriate reasons. This was not a tense or hostile situation on the surface. While the marketing person seemed to have disagreements with the company's management, everyone left the table with a positive outlook.

This person is now posting very negative frames about the company's situation on forums. They are acting as if they had inside knowledge of the company's prospects. There is a grain of truth to their posts, but it's all in the framework. The tone of their posts is akin to 'because they refused to follow my plan and ideas, their business is doomed and a failure.'

It seems to me that this person would prefer to see the company crash and burn so they could justify their own inability to move the needle on marketing in a positive direction, hence they are making somewhat histrionic postings in related forums.

The people who own this business are somewhat aghast at what feels like a personal attack on them and their business. They've started replying on the forum with a more positive outlook and explanation of their business plans. Is there an outcome or suggested way to approach this? I'm sure every organization has to deal with rants of this nature at some point in the current social media environment.

posted by diode to Human Relations (15 answers total)

Let it go. There is absolutely no way to engage with someone like this in a public forum without making yourself and your company/its owners look worse. Even if they're saying slanderous and horrible things about you, you will still come out of the exchange looking like the bad actor if you engage with them.
posted by Mayor West at 6:58 AM on October 25, 2019 [65 favorites]

This person just got laid off - they are probably pissed off. Have you ever read Glassdoor reviews?

Unless they are sharing information that is protected by an NDA or other legalities, you all should just ignore it, like MW says, you are only going to make yourself look worse by replying.
posted by RajahKing at 7:18 AM on October 25, 2019 [7 favorites]

People very often talk smack on every and all available forums after they've been let go. My former company let go a top exec recently who is suing and has been posting the details of the lawsuit and his opinions on the lawsuit on his LinkedIn on a daily basis over the past few months, and I don't know anyone in the industry who, if they had sympathy for his plight before he started his smear campaign, currently holds good feelings, so your situation should be something your company can probably ignore while it fizzles out online.
posted by xingcat at 7:33 AM on October 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Was this guy offered a package when he got laid off? One of the reasons to give packages to people who are laid off is that the company can make both receiving and getting to keep the package contingent upon certain things. It's SOP for a non-disparagement agreement to be among these things.

If your company didn't offer a package, or if it did offer a package and didn't include a non-disparagement agreement, this should be a learning experience for the company as it has no leverage over a former employee who can claim he is only sharing his (negative) opinion and that there is nothing in place saying he can't do so.

As others have observed, unless agreements were executed prohibiting him from making negative comments about the company, the best strategy will be to simply ignore it. If the owners are engaging in forum discussions, they should stop immediately as this will only backfire on them. The company should also get its ducks in a row for next time, which will inevitably arise at some future date. This is what labor and employment lawyers are for.
posted by slkinsey at 8:11 AM on October 25, 2019 [15 favorites]

I am not a lawyer, but in various day jobs over the years I have worked extensively with labor and employment attorneys.

I agree 100% that the company should work with a qualified labor and employment attorney in order to put policies and procedures in place to help prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future, and to increase the company's leverage in the event that it does happen in the future. Frankly, it wouldn't be a bad idea for the company to enlist the advice of a labor and employment attorney every time it terminates an employee who might be in a position to injure the company in some way. If the company's leadership is really concerned that this former employee's internet comments are injuring the company right now, sure, they can hire an attorney to explore their options and potentially write a cease-and-desist letter to the former employee. And, sure, those often work. But they sometimes fail spectacularly when sent to someone who has an understanding of his rights under the law. Beware the Streisand Effect, and what could happen if the former employee understands that the company has no real leverage and posts a scan of the cease-and-desist letter threatening a SLAPP suit on the internet. This has happened in some cases, and it has not gone well for the public image of the company sending the letter.
posted by slkinsey at 8:57 AM on October 25, 2019 [3 favorites]

Leave it alone. Employees should be free to speak about their employers at any time, especially when they are no longer employees.
posted by GoblinHoney at 9:03 AM on October 25, 2019 [22 favorites]

I am an employment lawyer (but probably not in your jurisdiction and definitely not your lawyer nor providing legal advice) and every time I have dealt with this issue for a client the right answer was to wait it out and not engage. If this person is divulging trade secrets or other confidential business information that could be a different story.
posted by wuzandfuzz at 9:59 AM on October 25, 2019 [3 favorites]

There's nothing you can or should do about this. The moral of the story is: don't fire your workers.
In their eyes you deserve bad press, and more. This especially goes if no severance package was offered, as stated above.
posted by BostonTerrier at 10:05 AM on October 25, 2019 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Okay, thanks for the input. To summarize: ignore it as there's little that can be done via responding directly that won't end up backfiring or escalating. Plan for next time and how to avoid this scenario recurring.
posted by diode at 10:08 AM on October 25, 2019

Take screenshots, but do not engage. Depending on the forum, they could be defaming the company, so dated screenshots would be useful in a civil trial. It'll probably never happen, because the ex-employee would have to be saying knowingly untrue things about the company to a degree that it costs the company money, or damages it in other ways (for a legal definition of damages), and those damages would have to exceed your company's threshold for taking action against the employee.

So, take screenshots, date them all, push them and links to the forum to whomever handles legal affairs in your company, and then move on to other things.
posted by Sunburnt at 11:12 AM on October 25, 2019

Best answer: It really depends on what harm they are causing (or what harm you're afraid they will cause). On the face of it, it seems like you're overly (and perhaps emotionally) invested in clamping down on negative commentary about your employer? Some other details in your post, such as your statement that "everyone left the table with a positive outlook" and the business owners taking this as a personal attack, point towards this being a strong possibility.

But there is the off-chance that you might be worried about significantly powerful misinformation that has the potential to, for example, expose your company to frivolous investigations or audits, jeopardize your relationship with key customers, etc. Even if your primary motivation is emotional and personal, this danger could be real.

So either way, your best bet is to speak with legal counsel. They will assess the actual threat level, which is the only actionable part of this whole affair. The lawyer's guidance might also help you and the owners reset your framing of this issue into less emotional and personal terms - essentially acting as a very expensive therapist, but sometimes this is necessary.
posted by MiraK at 11:26 AM on October 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'd still monitor carefully because if the employee gives away something that's confidential information ("Their next fiscal year is going to suck because Project X is late!"), that could be something the lawyers can use.
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:48 PM on October 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: What mirak said. It's hard not to be emotionally invested in a situation of this type concerning people you know well, admire and respect. The upshot of this was a team member reached out to the ex-employee. They reached an agreement for the posts to be called off, and the ex gave an apology of sorts. This is my understanding, I don't know the actual details. Thanks to all who offered tips and advice. Staying from the keyboard was very good counsel.
posted by diode at 6:36 PM on October 25, 2019

Did you fail to give this employee any severance at all? In the future, remember that it's the right thing to do (from many angles) to offer a severance package with a non-disparagement clause.
posted by schwinggg! at 6:47 PM on October 25, 2019 [3 favorites]

"Called off"? Will the prior unhelpful comments be deleted? If not (and even if so), does the company have any long-time, regular customers who might be pursuaded to post some rebutting testimonials?
posted by at at 7:24 AM on October 26, 2019