The latest edition comes from a Little Caesars restaurant in Roswell, NM. A video is trending of workers playing indoor baseball with pizza dough. Unless the employees were aliens from the alleged Roswell UFO crash of 1947, the incident may pass quickly since the general public has become more desensitized to these videos.
This doesn’t mean an organization can rest easy, because reputation takes a hit each time a damaging video pops up. Unfortunately, it’s predictable that there will always be a few bad apples in a business with customer-facing employees. A quick Google search will turn up other examples:
- Chipotle restaurant in St. Paul demanding up-front payment from African-American customers
- Raising Cain worker stirring a vat of ice tea with his forearm
- The racially-charged Starbuck’s bathroom denial in Philadelphia remains the most infamous of the past year
- A recent example is now viral from Waffle House where employees berated a drunk customer, and shared the video via social media
While there is no way to prevent these incidents, education and employee engagement are essential. Here are practical ways to reach out to employees before the next viral video:
- Educate workers — especially shift managers — on how quickly local issues can blow up and harm the company’s reputation.
- Be creative in delivering messages. Many retail workers are in their teens and 20’s. Requiring them to watch a long and boring PowerPoint presentation may “check the compliance box”, but the content won’t land.
- Consider short video reenactments or whiteboard animation to deliver the important messages.
- Make sure local workers know that when in doubt, call corporate communications. This should be the primary message for all employees because professional communicators can immediately expand their social media monitoring and use the tools in the crisis plan to try and get ahead of the issue.
There is no formula to keep employees from behaving badly. However, consistent training that creatively reinforces corporate policies may result in workers thinking twice before posting a damaging video.