Employee grousing spurs PR crisis for Weight Watchers

The complaints, which made the front page of The New York Times, originated on Weight Watchers’ ‘hosted communications hub.’

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So it’s little surprise that Weight Watcher employees—some of whom complain about barely making minimum wage—feel underpaid and undervalued. And in a bit of a nightmare scenario for the company, its employees’ complaints made it to the front page of The New York Times recently.

But this isn’t the standard “complaining about compensation” piece, because the manner in which this story became public is unusual.

According to a statement Weight Watchers sent me via email on Monday, the company confirms that, “The discussion among our [employees] took place on message boards on our Weight Watchers hosted communication hub.” It’s on that very site that employee complaints about compensation poured in by the hundreds.

Social media policy to prevent PR crisis?

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