Thirteen staff at Virgin Atlantic were sacked for making disrespectful comments about passengers and derogatory allegations about poor safety standards on public areas of the Facebook social networking site. Less than a week later, British Airways staff were reprimanded for whingeing about "annoying" and "smelly" passengers.
The events highlight how companies are realising how powerful the web is at shaping reputations, as this Economist article, Losing Face, explains.
No doubt PR companies who specialise in mediating and monitoring how brands are represented by bloggers and denizens of social networking sites are jumping at the chance to promote their own 'damage control' services.
Clearly, companies haven't been doing more to let their staff know what is and isn't acceptable in the first place? Every workplace has an internet usage policy, but it seems that people assume it's switched off when they leave the office, or they forget that things they post online can be traced.
After the Virgin Atlantic sackings, the company posted on its official fan page:
"Virgin Atlantic has been made aware of some malicious comments that have been made on a social networking site by a small number of its staff. The airline has started an immediate disciplinary investigation. We do not tolerate any criticism of our passengers or industry-leading safety standards and we are taking this matter very seriously."
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