Facebook has recently changed its corporate name to Meta, a reference to its CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg’s dreams of constructing a ‘metaverse.’ But experts believe that the company’s tactical rebranding may do little to nothing to staunch the company’s increasing attrition rate.

“I doubt this will redeem or protect the employer brand much,” says Brooks Holtom, Georgetown University business professor, specialising in how organisations acquire, develop, and retain human capital.

The company had faced increased scrutiny in recent weeks after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked several thousand internal documents to a consortium of media organisations to showcase that Facebook was not doing much to protect its users.

Also read: Storyboard | Why and how Facebook became Meta

Haugen quit Facebook after the January 6 Capitol Hill riots this year. However, before leaving the company, she had copied internal memos and documents, which she shared with The Wall Street Journal.

In a series of revelations, Haugen produced documents that showed how Facebook favoured and treated the elite differently and how the company’s algorithms fostered discord and were used by drug cartels and human traffickers openly.

It also revealed that Facebook had knowingly excited outrage on its site through an algorithm change in 2018 that could have potentially fuelled violence at the US Capitol Hill on January 6.

Haugen revealed internal research documents which highlighted that Facebook and Instagram, the photo-sharing social media platform that it owns, knew the effects it had on the mental health of teenage girls. But despite knowing that using the platform led to depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts among its users, the platform did very little to combat such effects or even highlight the risks that it posed to vulnerable children.

The company was also planning to entice pre-teen users in order to capitalise on a hitherto untapped market of consumers that would be turning to the wider Facebook and Instagram ecosystem as they grew older.

The leaks led to increased criticism from the press, parents, activist groups, lawmakers, and regulators. “With Facebook facing so many missteps and public criticism tarnishing the brand, people in the know won’t be fooled by this rebranding,” Holtom told CNBC.

In its latest earnings report, Zuckerberg refuted the claims saying that they “paint a false picture of our company.”

But apart from external criticism, Haugen’s leaks highlight how Facebook is fighting to keep its own employees on its side. The recent brand change may be a way to shed Facebook’s baggage, but for those working with the company, it may only be seen as a superficial change, furthering employee turnover.

“Facebook has talented people, and competitors in the market are looking for that talent,” Holtom says. “It’s extremely competitive. You can be sure companies are preparing to reach out selectively to inquire about people thinking of moving. It’s a precarious time for Facebook from a talent perspective.”

Also read: Facebook earmarks $50-mn investment to build metaverse responsibly

Facebook had managed to claim the title of the best company to work for in 2018, according to job review site Glassdoor. But since then the company has steadily slid down the rankings. Following reports of collusion with Cambridge Analytica, the company fell to the seventh spot in just a year and then tumbled to No. 23 in 2020 before climbing back to No. 11 in 2021.

While new employees joining the company’s new Reality Labs division may see improved perception, most other employees will not be swayed by the name change. As Zuckerberg himself stated, the name Facebook has been too intertwined with the company.

Also read: Facebook is now Meta; CEO Mark Zuckerberg lists reasons for name change

"Right now, our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can't possibly represent everything that we're doing today, let alone in the future... It is time for us to adopt a new company brand to encompass everything that we do, to reflect who we are and what we hope to build," Zuckerberg said.

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)

First Published:Oct 29, 2021 6:43 PM IST