The popular salon tech company, Yes Madam, is receiving backlash online after allegedly firing over 100 employees who said they were stressed at work. Here's what happened exactly!
Yes Madam is a popular salon and technology company that appeared on India's first business reality show, Shark Tank India's third season. The company impressed the sharks and received a funding of Rs. 1.5 crore from Vineeta Singh, Aman Gupta, Peyush Bansal, and Ritesh Agarwal. Yes Madam's successful pitch in Shark Tank India raised them to fame; as of now, they have 114K followers on Instagram.
Not only this, popular Bollywood actress, Shraddha Kapoor and her father, Shakti Kapoor are also featured in one of their ads, which speaks volumes about its stature in the beauty and wellness sector. The brand is also collaborating with a series of renowned social media influencers to grow more with the passing of each day.
The three IG reels that are pinned on the grid of their Instagram handle feature renowned content creators, including Jaspreet Kaur Dyora (829K followers), Rj Simran Singh (678K followers), and Dharna Durga (1.5 million followers).
According to the official website of Yes Madam, it has more than 3000 professionals who are trained to provide world-class services to their customers. So far, Yes Madam's smartphone application has over one million downloads and two million-plus bookings and is currently operating in more than fifty cities across India.
However, on December 9, 2024, Yes Madam topped the trending charts, and even the entire social media was buzzing with its name. Unfortunately, the reason behind it wasn't positive, as the brand was getting bashed on the internet for the wrong reason.
It all started when an employee of Yes Madam shared a picture of the mail from the company's HR department on LinkedIn. As per the email, over 100 employees were informed that they were fired after they admitted that they were stressed in a survey conducted by the company. The email shocked the netizens as they couldn't believe that a company had conducted a survey and asked its employees whether they were stressed and fired the ones who said 'Yes'. An excerpt from the email could be read as:
"To ensure no one remains stressed at work, we have made the difficult decision to part ways with employees who indicated significant stress."
As soon as the mail started trending on social media, several people shared their thoughts and lashed out at the company for their inhuman practice. While most of the people penned '#BoycottYesMadam' in the comment section of their posts on different social media platforms, some netizens suggested the company should fire their PR team, who came up with the worst idea possible for a campaign. Amidst the huge backlash, Yes Madam clarified that they clearly mentioned that they've not fired anyone and it was just a part of their campaign to promote work-life balance.
However, as soon as the post went live on different social media platforms, it left netizens even more furious than before. While some titled Yes Madam's clarification post as' damage control', most people continued lashing out at the company for how they treated their employees. Most people quickly dismiss Yes Madam's clarification post by pointing out the line in their viral email that reads, "We have made a difficult decision to part ways". Most of the netizens admitted that they don't believe in Yes Madam's clarification and labelled it as a 'bad damage control move'.
Most people have lost their faith in Yes Madam, as '#BoycottYesMadam' is visible in most of their social media posts. Although the company has clearly stated that it was an awareness campaign, it has backfired in the worst way possible. It will be interesting to see how they're going to deal with it, but at the moment, Yes Madam is getting the same hate that Ernst & Young India received earlier this year in 2024 when one of its employees died at the age of 26 due to the company's alleged toxic work culture.
What are your thoughts on this controversy about Yes Madam? Do you believe in the company's clarification that it was just a campaign to highlight the problem of toxic work culture in India? Let us know.
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