Cyber Venting: Healthy Therapy?

What is it about the Internet that lets us think we have the world as our therapist? It used to be the half-hour breakfast griping sessions or the huddle at the office pantry. Now workers are finding new ways to vent their frustrations or air their opinions about their employers and careers.

Cyber venting has arisen. Akin to a Catholic confessional booth, simple message boards on Yahoo to more dedicated wailing walls in the likes of www.workingwounded.com represent the forum for this catharsis. Here employees find a safe haven amongst the other like-minded disgruntled to vent and share their anonymous emotional upheavals and professional disappointments to sympathetic listeners.
"I have been passed up for my due promotion for the 3rd time at work. Is my boss just blind or plain discriminatory to my gender?!""Management is useless, poor and simple. Why don't they pay me USD100,000 to collect information? No, instead they would rather hire a vulture of a consultant. Great job, guys."

The messages range from discontent with management to more serious instances of flagrant rage. Whatever the message may be, it is raising public relations headaches and managerial nightmares for employers. Because such messages are hard to be accounted for or traced, employers can never be sure if the post is being authored by an employee or if the source is a saboteur wanting to bring the competition down. The impact can be great on the company, particularly if it is sending the message of impending layoffs or poor financial performance. Whilst some companies have gone to the extent of suing for libel, cyber laws in the region are still in their infancy, and the question of who's to blame and who has the right-to-say-what are still hanging in the air.

But perhaps, management should take a more proactive approach. There is much that management can do to quell dissent and address the issue. Companies have begun to set up their own anonymous intranets that allow their employees to vent within corporate walls, without fear or favour. Further, certain strains of management have begun skulking public message boards such as www.icered.com to listen in on what their employees are saying. On www.vault.com, CEOs and senior management have been known to break silence and come forth with statements of their own.

Senior management are beginning to take the initiative to use such focus groups to gain a better understanding of the people on the ground. Rather than trying to spin-doctor their way through the negative vibes, employers need to take advantage of the information culture and use the medium to tell the truth, to clear misstatements and to be honest. The savvy workforce today can smell a lie a byte away. Advice to managers is to hide nothing and gain respect from employees through upfront honesty. They may not like you, but they will at least respect you. And that is a rarity in this corporate day. Who knows how else the corporate grapevine will “metamorphosise” in the coming years? Perhaps I'll pop in on www.icered.com and find out for myself? See you there!