First off we are talking about benign matters like employees' opinions, not trade secrets (common sense would prevent the latter from leaking).
Second, I am not advocating to force anyone to disclose anything, but merely for them to have the potential to do so if they wish. If you trust them enough to complete the task then surely you should also trust their common sense about what to talk and not talk about (trade secrets, etc) to the press?
If the thought of anyone being able to "ruin" the company's reputation by airing dirty laundry is scary, then maybe fix the root cause instead of the symptoms and ask yourself 1) why is there dirty laundry to begin with? and 2) why would the employee be unhappy enough to leak it?
There are tons of happy small businesses with no such thing as "PR" nor media policy (just employees' common sense) and they don't seem to implode, because either there's no dirty laundry or the employees are paid & treated well enough to not put the company in disrepute. It's like mutual trust & respect.
I trust people at the company to have common sense about what to talk and not talk about, as long as it is their job, as they are most likely able to have the full story and consider the situation from all angles.
However, I do not trust an average engineer's common sense to know what to talk/not talk about, especially considering how narrowly scoped most of the engineering work (and, conversely, their exposure to the overall big picture) is.
>There are tons of happy small businesses with no such thing as "PR" nor media policy (just employees' common sense) and they don't seem to implode, because either there's no dirty laundry or the employees are paid & treated well enough to not put the company in disrepute. It's like mutual trust & respect.
Agreed with this one, but it only seems to support my previous point about the big picture. If you work at a small company, you are way more likely to have an understanding of the big picture than a cog at a big tech company, who stands very little chance at doing so.
>If the thought of anyone being able to "ruin" the company's reputation by airing dirty laundry is scary, then maybe fix the root cause instead of the symptoms and ask yourself 1) why is there dirty laundry to begin with? and 2) why would the employee be unhappy enough to leak it?
There doesn't have to be any real "dirty laundry", it's all about how people on the outside can spin the story, even if the facts leaked are true. Just look at this submission post itself. Factually, it is true, because an employee spoke out about the company on the topic of climate change and got fired for it. Or, a more level-headed view, would be something more like "An employee acted as if they were representing company views while giving an interview regarding company policies and got fired for it regardless of their stance on the issue."
Which of the two do you think will be more unfavorable to the company and paint it in a bad light? Which one opens up the company more to the potential damage?