Company ‘Fires’ 100 Employees After A Workplace Survey Showed They Were ‘Significantly Stressed’ — 'They Were Given A Break To Reset'
It turned out to be a PR stunt, but many people did not find it funny.
TetianaKtv | Shutterstock An Indian tech company has drawn quite a bit of criticism online regarding the way it claimed to have handled its workers' high-stress levels.
The entire thing appears to have been an attempt at viral marketing, but given the hardships of the working world and today's bizarre job market, many aren't seeing the humor.
The company 'fired' 100 employees for being stressed out — or so they claimed.
YesMadam is an India-based app for finding in-home beauty services which won a round of funding on "Shark Tank India," the country's version of the popular reality show. Virality is, of course, a great way to help a fledgling company soar, and YesMadam has gotten plenty recently — some say for all the wrong reasons.
The company left much of the internet slack-jawed after a since-deleted LinkedIn post from someone claiming to work for the company went viral. The post featured a screenshot of an email alleged to have been sent by the company's HR manager, in which the company had a drastic response to its staff's struggles with work-life balance.
The company said it fired the employees after a workplace survey showed they were 'significantly stressed.'
The bizarre email immediately sparked outrage. In it, the HR manager explained that YesMadam "conducted a survey to understand your feelings about stress at work," adding that the company "deeply values and respects" its employees' concerns about the matter.
How it supposedly chose to respond, however, had people seeing red. "To ensure that no one remains stressed at work, we have made the difficult decision to part ways with employees who indicated significant stress."
That the email announced this after claiming to be a "company committed to fostering a healthy and supportive work environment" only added fuel to the fire. One person on X said the "insane" email left them "shaking" with anger. People quickly lined up to lambaste the company for its actions.
The post turned out to be a viral marketing stunt for YesMadam's new HR initiative to combat stress.
After the email went viral, an Indian tech worker named Akshay posted a LinkedIn article cataloging all the ways this email looked clearly fake — the company's name was spelled two different ways, the email was marked "external," meaning it came from outside the company, and, perhaps most notably, the actions described were likely illegal even under India's lax labor laws.
Sure enough, the company itself soon posted on LinkedIn, claiming that the whole thing was essentially a hoax. "The social media posts were a planned effort to highlight the serious issue of workplace stress," the post read.
It goes on to announce the launch of YesMadam's new "Happy 2 Heal" initiative, "which offers head massages and spa sessions right in the workplace, designed to help employees unwind and recharge." It also announced what it called "India's first-ever De-Stress Leave Policy," granting employees dedicated time off for stress management.
This is great, of course — especially in a country like India, which is currently having a national reckoning about its brutal corporate culture following the death of accountant Anna Sebastian Perayil earlier this year due to overwork. However, many felt this was a twisted way to go about such a launch.
Many online are outraged by the company's use of layoffs for a stunt.
YesMadam seems to have expected everyone to get a good laugh out of this, but that wasn't how it went down.
While some did congratulate YesMadam on what is inarguably an effective stunt (after all, had YOU ever heard of this company before this?), many others criticized YesMadam's stunt as tone-deaf, especially given how commonplace mass layoffs are nowadays.
"Let us make a PR campaign off layoffs they said. It will be fun, they said," wrote one person on LinkedIn. "Really? This whole thing doesn't build trust," wrote another. "It just leaves me with a bunch of serious questions."
In any event, it worked handily — yes, because media literacy is in the toilet and nobody thinks critically before sharing content, but also because our work culture has become so toxic a move like this feels all too plausible. Perhaps most tellingly, at least here in the States, YesMadam had its defenders.
Arguably, the most disturbing part of this entire story was the scores of American workers on X applauding YesMadam for firing the "woke" "snowflake" employees too weak to handle job stress. With so many workers keen to lick the boots of their employers, it's no wonder YesMadam's stunt had everyone fooled.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.