Your employees talk! Bad news?

Let’s say for example that the boss of a company which sells a very nice/successful product is a 'bad' boss and his employees ‘hate’ him.

The boss can’t prevent them to talk to their friends and families. When they will be asked about the product (as insiders) how do you think they will respond?

• Is their negative emotional bias towards the boss going to affect the way they will talk about the product?
• Are they more likely to emphasize the negative aspects of the product?
• How many potential customers can this boss loose by bad mouth of his employees?

And finally, do you think today employers(with exceptions of course) underestimate this angry-employee-bad-mouth effect?

Comments

[Dave Wheeler]

What an interesting question! I am a Trainer and Manager in a wireless Customer Service Call Center where our turnover is between 70-80 percent per year. There is no question a bad boss is going to negatively impact the company financially in hundreds of ways. To answer question # 3, the quantity would be incalcuable. Not only can "word of mouth" cost you consumer customers, it can also affect your ability to attract and retain new employees. They will talk negatively but I'm not sure it would be about a particular product or service. In fact, many of our folks will speak enthusiastically about our products, like our handsets, because they and their friends and family use them as well.

Do I think employers "under-estimate" the effects of having bad bosses? I think they they purposely ignore it. It is only when companies use a performance metric like employee retention for in the executive bonus and compensation packages that they pay attention to this resolving this very real and results impacting problem.

[RobCH]

In my experience staff can (and most often do) remain intensely loyal to and positive about a company or its product, while heartily detesting their boss, or management in general. So I believe the issue of negative spillover is not clear-cut. On a two-by-two most people would of course be looking for the great product/great boss square. Poor product/poor boss is of course the double-whammy. In between, one can at least survive the other permutations, and possibly thrive as well. To an extent, the good counterbalances the poor; it's not desirable, but it's what lots of working people see around them every day.

In life, I think most people talk about bad bosses like bad weather or illness - they are something that happens to most of us at some point or other in our working lives. And as a result we subtly distinguish between "boss-stories" and "product/company-stories", both in the telling and the hearing. We don't tend to extrapolate from the particular (boss) to the general (product). But if the bad boss stories are about decisions that affect product quality or customer service or company policy, in other words the story goes from being "family" to "public", then the damage to reputation is potentially enormous, and rightly so.

[john moore (from Brand Autopsy)]

Nice, provocative post Marko. Gallup, a long-standing American research firm, has done some interesting research into this area. While not tied directly to word of mouth (WOM) implications of having a bad boss compared to a good boss, Gallup’s findings may shed some light into your questions.

The findings shared below are from the book “12: THE ELEMENTS OF GREAT MANAGING.”

33% of employees polled by Gallup strongly agree they have been given the tools and resources from their boss and/or company to expertly get their job done. These employees are more productive and more engaged at work when they have the tools and resources to perform. Presumably, these employees who have been given the proper tools/resources and are engaged on the job will spread more positive WOM about their company than negative WOM.

Gallup research has continually showed a direct correlation between employees feeling as though they are not cared about and employee resignations. Companies can experience 22-to-37% higher turnover rates when employees believe their manager treats them as just a number. Again, it’s natural to assume companies with higher turnover rates also experience higher rates of negative WOM from unhappy employees.

Back in December of 2006, I shared more Gallup research findings from “12: THE ELEMENTS OF GREAT MANAGING” book on the Brand Autopsy blog. Go here for more: http://bit.ly/cbwZ1e

john moore
“WOM Enthusiast”
Word of Mouth Marketing Association
www.WOMMA.org

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