Public image is the loser if bosses scapegoat their employees
It is almost never a good idea for a leader to publicly criticise his or her employees. As a public relations matter, this strategy is almost certain to backfire. People generally hold leaders accountable for what their organisations do.
If a mistake happens on a chief executive’s watch, observers may fault that person for bad decision-making or for being out of the loop – but either way, they’ll expect the leader to take the blame.
Singling out employees for censure looks like an attempt to shirk responsibility, and also appears petty and gauche. That only deepens the reputational damage to the leader and their organisation.
Take the case of Wells Fargo. In 2016, it emerged that the company had opened more than 2 million accounts that weren’t requested by customers. The bank’s chief executive, John Stumpf, publicly blamed his employees – who, according to US regulators, were trying to meet sales goals set by the bank – for bad behaviour. Wells Fargo fired 5,300 people for improper practices.
Predictably, trying to scapegoat individual staffers for a system-wide problem only made Mr Stumpf look like a bad leader.
The US senator Bob Menendez said it was “despicable” for him to shift the blame onto “low-paid retail bank employees”, while Elizabeth Warren, an American academic and Democrat politician excoriated his “gutless leadership”, adding: “This is about accountability. You should resign.” Their comments made national news. Mr Stumpf retired a month later.
Volkswagen’s American chief executive learned this lesson the same way.
In October 2015, in the midst of an environmental scandal, Michael Horn told the US Congress that “a couple of software engineers” in his company were responsible for installing equipment designed to cheat emissions tests. His claim that a few rogue staffers put illegal devices in 11 million cars around the globe did not quite pass the sniff test.
Five months later, the company announced that Mr Horn was leaving by “mutual agreement”.
The only exception to this rule would be when an employee does something in his or her private life – such as committing a crime – that reflects poorly on his or her employer. Then, it would be appropriate for an organisation to condemn the behaviour and disavow the employee.
However, this only works if done immediately. If an organisation knows about allegations for a long time and only distances itself from the staffer when the offence becomes public, it will seem disingenuous.
Attacking employees also tends to backfire internally, according to Helio Garcia, the president of Logos Consulting. “Ineffective leaders publicly call out or humiliate their people, either in the workplace or in more public settings,” he says. “This predictably causes all employees to lose confidence and trust in the boss. Especially when the public criticism seems arbitrary, petty or ad hominem, other employees will cringe and feel personally at risk.”
As a result, he says, employees will be less loyal. This can hurt their productivity and lead them to act out – for example, by leaking information to the press. Overall, Mr Garcia says, attacking employees creates a “culture of backstabbing and chaos”.
We’ve seen such chaos in the White House, with the abrupt departures of press secretary Sean Spicer, the chief of staff Reince Priebus and communications director Anthony Scaramucci – all in a 10-day period.
To her credit, when she announced Mr Scaramucci’s departure on Monday, the White House press secretary Sarah Sanders declined to excoriate him. “We wish him all the best,” she said.
Her boss could learn a lesson from that statement.
Singling out employees for censure looks like an attempt to shirk responsibility, and also appears petty and gauche
Kara Alaimo is an assistant professor of public relations at Hofstra University and the author of Pitch, Tweet, or Engage on the Street: How to Practice Global Public Relations and Strategic Communication. She previously served in the Obama administration