If you’re firing 190 employees, make sure they don’t have access to the company Twitter account

Firing employees can be hard. There are emotions at play and emotions can lead to bad decisions. They can also lead to funny consequences when the people in charge aren’t cognizant of how the new world of social media works. Such is the case for embattled British music retailer HMV. The company, already embroiled in a form of bankruptcy protection (see image from their website below) due to the shift towards digital music downloads, fired 190 employees today. At least one of those employees had access to the company’s Twitter account and gave a blow by blow report of the events as they unfolded. The Tweets have been since removed, but screenshots linger: Buzzfeed reports a few more Tweets that occurred after the ones above: Once the account was back under current-employee control and the offending Tweets were deleted, here is how the company responded: The lesson here is that it doesn’t matter how bad things are in the real world with your business. You’ll only make it worse if you neglect the very basic step of cutting off access to social media to employees before you fire them. They already have enough problems with the company. Don’t let disgruntled ex-employees make it worse.