Corporate employees turn to Facebook to speak their mind

Employees in corporate houses have now found a new place to complain about work problems and boast about their escapades in fooling their employers — confession pages on Facebook. Mugdha Variyar reports.

Employees in corporate houses have now found a new place to complain about work problems and boast about their escapades in fooling their employers — confession pages on Facebook.

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Ever since the trend of online confessions on the social networking site became popular among students, employees of several leading companies, including Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, Accenture and Mercer, have taken to it.

The posts range from complaints about pay scales, long work hours and cafeteria food to matters of the heart.

One of the posts on an IT company’s confession page says: “I would like to confess some lies I told my employers. I was given a week’s leave in December to visit my family but instead I took another leave of two weeks telling my employers that I was ill.’(sic)

Another employee found vent to his salary woes. “My friends got better pay (23-24k) even during their training days and I don’t get 22k properly even after completing 8 months’. (sic)

Some employees use the space to take personal digs. ‘Some of our senior managers need lessons on how to dress up’, read a post, while another said: ‘Project managers keep doing meaningless PPTs and playing with excel sheets’. However, talks of love affairs and infatuations dominate most confession pages.

The trend has become a matter of concern for companies, particularly human resource (HR) officials. “While such pages can help in knowing employee concerns, it could potentially affect employer branding on a larger scale,” said the HR manager of a mobile technology firm, requesting anonymity.

Employees said confession pages gave them an outlet for their views. “It is a good way for us to give our feedback about our workplace,” said a Goregaon-based employee of a leading IT firm.

However, the option failed to attract some. “In my company, we can easily approach our seniors with any problem. There is no need to confess about anything on Facebook,” said Samvedna Agnihotri, 25, an employee with a leading financial consultancy firm that has a confession page.