For the first time I have been recruiting for a company that has brand recognition around the world (Brand Y). Their brand is so powerful Y employees buy tee shirts, hats and mugs, and they feature the Y brand logo on their facebook pages.

In this digital age people can take pictures of their work and show all of their friends. Their friend may have never even thought about working for brand Y. These same employees are on fan pages and have an ongoing love for the company and brand Y.

Conversely I was talking with a friend yesterday who works for a different company with one of the worlds most recognized brands (brand X). This friend had a lot of insight into what the company was doing to ruin their brand reputation.

Management was cutting the working hours of poor employees so they would quit. This is a common practice known in legal circles as constructive dismissal. Some companies take the view that progressive discipline and termination pay is too hard, costly or time consuming, so they reduce the amount of work until the employee is forced to find another job and quits.

The unintended consequence of this is how it will effect a brand over time. The company performing constructive dismissal has a “Fan” site on Facebook called “I hate company X” with over 5,000 fans. If someone feels poorly treated by their former employer they can now scream it over the internet. In this case 5,000 people hate X and each of these 5,000 have several hundred friends. 5,000 x 200 friends = 1,000,000 people who have a friend who hates X and advertise it on their Facebook.  Conversely, brand Y has 170,000 fans on Facebook meaning that over 34 million people get positive exposure to brand Y.

I’m happy to be recruiting for brand Y and hope that management thinks long and hard about how they treat employees.