A company’s culture is the foundation upon which its operations are run, hence should be friendly, open and nurturing – to motivate employees through hard times.

After working at an organization for a certain period of time, your tenure eventually comes to end ends, and you meet situations and people demanding you to give an account of your career’s affair at that firm. While this exiting might come either through a retrenchment, a transit to a greener pasture or through retirement, how comfortable you were as an employee at that firm greatly determines the kind of comment you give about it. This situation often gets one telling the truth as at that point you stand to lose nothing if you give a negative comment about the place, just as it is, if they give a good comment. Hence, as more former employees and clients continue to get accustomed to writing reviews about their former workplaces or products, their comments have in turn become a major constituent in what is popularly known as a company’s reputation.  

Although clients are also fundamental in defining the quality of a firms reputation, employees who by far are seen as insiders – with more accurate details about the companies’ transactions, are seen as those with the ultimate clue. While these comments tackle areas like the company’s infrastructure, the employer’s relationship with the workers, quality of products and services and to allowances, a workplace can either be described as good or bad, nothing more – and this sets the difference between successful companies and those that are known to be to failures.

Following a popular tweet that saw some renowned companies faulted over their negligences, by people who during some particular time acted as employees in these firms, it is vivid that the even the countries most prestigious firms have at times missed some steps that greatly sabotaged their reputations. But how well they are able to gather their reputation back into a solid thing, is what says whether they remain at the top or not.

They tweet by this influencer demanded people to tweet back, openly, names of companies they had worked for, or were working for and which had exceeded the expectations in terms of employee satisfaction. For respondents who cited workplaces they were no longer working for, had their responses merited against the degree of their desirability to go back and further their careers as employees there, while those still at work against the level of their desperation if they were to be relocated to other workplaces. The responses were stupefying and the names that appeared there were nothing close to what most anticipated.

In just a few days, the post became very popular and amassed over three thousand likes and comments. The tweets came from diverse sources including from Kenyans who worked with international organizations like the Thompson Reuters and even from those living and working in diaspora. However, aside the much important accolades in form of positive testimonies, that respondents bestowed on their companies, the post became part of a broader debate about the status of the country’s employment scene and generally how well most of the organizations were prioritizing their employee welfare.

A ‘good company’.

To decipher the lessons sent forth by this tweet we can possibly take one of the highly liked tweets which despite its exclusivity in context of it’s message, had much discourses to lend to both employees and their employers. The person who seemingly was from Mwea Tebere area in Kirinyaga, referred to some days when they used to harvest rice at a certain mzees farm, and his selfless nature saw him give them very sumptuous meals when ideally workers were supposed to bring their own food – for the employee to make a profit after paying them their daily wage. The meals which he said were not only sumptuous but in plenty costed him a lot that he would be left with no profits or just a sliver of it. In turn this saw employees flow in and out of his farms when there was scarcity of labor in the area and also came in handy to provide him with labor when he was facing financial hiccups.  This influencer despite delving on a very far-fetched context, different from the ideal one of offices, gave an example that ultimately said it all. That it’s very important for to firms pursue a charming character first, then seek to prioritize on amassing profits. It came so easily for this farmer to convince the workers to work for him when he was out of cash, as they were more than sure that he will meet his promise, and even due to the outgoing nature he had showed, them felt very obliged to work for him, even if the guarantee to be paid was not there. Yet while profits remain the core motive upon which enterprises are brought up, they don’t always flow in if the company’s reputation is not withstanding and if employees are not satisfied or happy to be part of the firm’s team. To grasp a good reputation companies should seek to provide a quality experience, give priority to customer service, get involved with its community, respond to reviews, build its online presence, all the time as it focuses on treating its employees well.  Employees are very important for reputation building and their extra-role behaviors, such as being positive spoken people for the firm, can improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency which increases the organizational reputation. An organizations reputation is basically its greatest intangible asset. When a company is viewed as reliable, transparent, and responsible it can set your business apart from competitors – offering a tangible advantage in your market.

Role of social media

Unlike the situation we had a few years ago where public foras or group discussions were the popular ways of debating about social problems, social media has come up very first to alter this ideal. Still, way past its motive of being just a social networking site it has redefined its role as a tool upon which organizations can greatly build themselves or dramatically drown to very low levels.

The fact that the tweet allowed people to publicly tag companies both for their goods and bad, it significantly became a changing point for companies that came beneath the ladder, to make an effort and scale up their priorities to enhance their public image.  With a good reputation, companies can easily inch closer to their potential customers since there is evidence of trustworthiness and honesty hence reaching out to their goals as these customers are ever ready to even pay more. This defined the new role of social media as a great innovation, very fit for societal development including through acting as a watchdog against manipulative firms that don’t prioritize employee welfare. For example, when more than two negative comments from different individuals landed on a single company citing their unfriendly employee treatment, the rest would reply with besmirch emojis suggesting that they had already built a bad image about the firm and would not even like to do business with them leave alone working there.  So far, the purpose of social media which has greatly improved is now very applicable in business to attract customers, get customer feedback and build customer loyalty, increase a firms market reach including international markets, do market research and reduce marketing costs and also to increase revenue by building customer networks and advertising.