Social media is rewriting the rules of engagement between employers and staff — and workers are not holding back

Annie Leibovitz has photographed many celebrities: the Queen, Kanye West, John Lennon — and now Mary, an engineering manager. She is among a number of Hyundai employees shot for the carmaker’s marketing campaign for its cancer charity. It’s also, of course, a sales pitch. The pandemic sparked a correction in the celebrity market. They suddenly seemed frivolous rather than aspirational. In July last year, British Vogue featured neither models nor actors on its cover but essential workers. Showcasing frontline employees might be new for the magazine but organisations have long used employees to make sales and gain recruits. The UK government has launched a campaign to attract care workers, featuring real carers supporting clients shaving, socialising and living independently. Such stage management inevitably masks problems. Gavin Edwards, senior national officer for social care at Unison, a union, was blunt about “slick adverts” not addressing a “job without sick pay, where poor treatment and exploitation are rife.” Social media has rewritten the rules. Employees may promote themselves as much as the brand — and are liable to spin out of control.