Bad impressions last longer in your consumers' memories than good ones. Make sure your employees aren't sabotaging your company's road to success.

It’s every employer’s worst nightmare: You’ve invested valuable time to build your company brand and have a clean and credible reputation in the market. Until that one employee does the unthinkable, tainting your brand image and destroying everything you’ve ever worked for.

Unfortunately, employees who damage a company’s reputation are a reality, even if they do so unintentionally. Take the case of former real estate agent, Penny Sparrow who after her social media comment, brought her former employer into disrepute.

The truth is the moment issues of this nature make their way to the public’s ears, one of the first things people do is a Google search to find out more about the person implicated. And if they find anything that is inconsistent with your brand, it influences their purchasing decisions. But Penny Sparrow’s incident is just one of a few ways your employees can potentially ruin your company brand, whether directly or indirectly:

They spread hate speech on the Internet

The Internet era has made it much easier for employees to spread information. Nowadays, your employees have several platforms where they can make their voices heard on a large scale:

Facebook and Twitter rants have become commonplace

Beyond the disgruntled employee who will purposefully blast a comment on Facebook directed at ruining your company brand, you have employees who innocently post inappropriate updates, unprofessional images and distasteful videos. If your employees’ privacy settings are not activated, it’s easy for the general public to have access to their feed and immediately get an impression of “Bradley who works for Said Company is unprofessional”.

Read: The question that every manager asks about social media is finally answered

They give bad customer service

Researchers have proven that people tend to remember negative experiences more than they do the positive. That means that when customers talk about your brand they are likely to bring up how upset, angry, insulted, ignored or how frustrated they were left feeling after an interaction with your employee. So the manner in which your customers are treated by your support team is likely to have a greater impact on your reputation than your company mission and vision, corporate social responsibility or the appearance of your website.

They don't take care of how they carry themselves

On occasion, you may send your employees out to events, conferences, workshops and the like to represent your brand. They are essentially ambassadors of your brand, which says it all. Their aim is to represent your brand in a positive light and bring consumers closer to your product or service. However, if your employees are not interested in your company or carry themselves in an unprofessional manner, bad perceptions linger with your potential consumers. And if they are really unimpressed by your employee’s behaviour, they will tell the whole world.

As an employer, you know that part of running a successful company means ensuring that you take good care of your company’s image and reputation, which is why your employees should be your main focus. They have the ability to do a lot of damage if you neglect them.

If you’d like more management advice and employer branding tips, stick around on Careers24, visit our employer branding pages or contact our employer branding coach at employerbrandcoach@careers24.com.