Employee engagement isn’t just an HR metric, but a visible, public-facing asset … or liability.
In January 2024, a Cloudflare employee who had just been laid off did something HR would never have approved of. She posted. Nine minutes of her own termination meeting went public, racking up millions of views and forcing the CEO to respond directly on social media. More than two years later, that video is still being cited, still shaping how companies handle layoff conversations, and still proving that an employee with a phone can have a more lasting impact than any official statement.
What people say about work when they’re at home, they now say online too. The dinner table used to be where it ended. Now one post from a first-week intern can potentially reach more prospective hires than your careers page will all year. Every employee is telling your story, whether they’re answering a question about whether they like their job or filming a day-in-the-life for LinkedIn. That’s already happening inside your company. The only open question is whether it’s helping you.
People make content for their personal platforms daily: habits, schedules, lifestyle, and everything in between. How people feel about their workplace, from trust in leadership to work-life balance, tends to surface in what they post online as naturally as it does in conversation.
Why should that matter to you? Because people believe it. Personal content is organic, so it carries a kind of trust a “careers” page can’t manufacture. It’s a real glimpse into someone’s experience, not a curated one. According to a 2025 Zety survey, 92% of Gen Z say they trust TikTok for career advice, and 95% say a company’s social media presence directly impacts whether they apply. People are increasingly turning to peers over polish.
All of this means that companies need to pay much more attention to what people are saying about them. Most companies keep an eye on their Glassdoor rating and press mentions, but more robust social listening as a whole is ever more important. Because by the time a post like the Cloudflare one is trending, it’s too late.
Beyond just listening though, the best companies are taking advantage of the opportunity by curating positive experiences that people want to share with their networks. Risk can always best be mitigated by building a workplace that people are proud to talk about, even at the same time that you ensure you have a plan for when something goes sideways.
So, what actually moves the needle internally? It starts with the people employees interact with daily, not the mission statement. Managers shape how a job feels far more than any values poster does. Transparent feedback loops make sure that employees don’t learn to vent elsewhere. Recruiting communications need to be honest about what the job and culture actually are, not just what sells; a mismatch here is often the first thing a new hire talks about. And the story that leadership tells externally has tomatch what employees experience day to day, because if it doesn’t, employees will tell everyone.
Above all, the best companies make sure that employees are given the platform to talk about their work authentically, without needing to be scripted. The goal isn’t controlling the message, it’s making sure there’s a good one to tell.
It takes more than an HR policy to solve. It is employer brand work, defining what the employee experience actually is, not just how it’s described in recruiting materials. It’s corporate communications, making sure the internal and external stories align. It’s crisis communications, having a real plan when something goes public, rather than a scramble. Employees are always going to talk about work. The question is whether your organization has put in the effort to make sure that’s a good thing.