A CEO deactivated her Instagram after going through immense backlash for asserting she 'restructured' her social media workforce, forcing different workers to contribute to these roles

• The CEO of a clothes startup drew ire after saying she “restructured” her social media workforce.
• Many individuals assumed she laid off the workforce, however a spokesperson mentioned nobody was fired — the roles are being redistributed.
• CEO Lindsay Carter briefly deactivated her private Instagram account amid the backlash.

The CEO of an activewear clothes startup deactivated her social media account after going through immense backlash for asserting she “restructured” her social media workforce, primarily eliminating it. As a substitute, each worker in a “inventive function” can be tasked to contribute to the corporate’s social media advertising, a spokesperson instructed Insider.

The announcement from Lindsay Carter, the founder and CEO of activewear firm SET, drew fast outcry this week, as folks assumed she had laid off her whole social media workforce. SET instructed Insider that nobody was fired. However the backlash compelled Carter to deactivate her personal social media “to guard her psychological well being,” the corporate mentioned.

Within the authentic, now-deleted TikTok that sparked the scandal, Carter instructed viewers she was restructuring the social media workforce by eliminating it.

—Rachel Karten (@milkkarten) May 15, 2023

“We did one thing internally known as Tremendous SET. It’s with 12 creatives at SET that make up all of the inventive stuff that we do,” Carter mentioned. “We cowl all silos of inventive: social, advertising, TikTok.”

On Monday, the TikTok was re-shared to Twitter, the place it obtained a flood of criticism as a result of both folks assumed she laid off these staff or are forcing folks to do extra work for equal pay.

“Not the advertising spin of we ‘restructured’ our workforce aka we laid folks off who had been educated and are consolidating to economize and making different advertising people with specialties now have a much bigger work load with out extra pay or coaching which will not pan out effectively or with actual revenue,” one person tweeted.

Consumer @milkkarten shared a screenshot from Carter’s Instagram Story explaining her choice additional. Carter mentioned “the panorama for the social media function has modified drastically” over the previous few years whereas “the roles for a social workforce aren’t actually evolving,” and that the brand new program was working easily via its first few weeks.

When reached, Gina Sheldon, the Model Strategist for SET, instructed Insider that “no members of [its] social media workforce had been laid off.” The corporate is making social media a “collaborative” effort amongst 10 of its workers, they mentioned. 

“As a workforce, we determined that one of the simplest ways for our firm to deal with our socials can be to work collaboratively among the many 10 workers in inventive roles, together with Lindsey, to carry our model to life holistically throughout all advertising channels,” Sheldon mentioned in an electronic mail assertion.

—Rachel Karten (@milkkarten) May 15, 2023

Past maybe misunderstanding the information, many individuals on-line had been indignant that Carter was off-loading additional work on her workers.

“Actually making a actuality of the nightmare that everybody in social offers with commonly. Everybody in advertising or model suppose they know methods to do social’s job higher than SMMs [Social Media Marketers],” one Twitter user wrote. “Her model and inventive groups get to do a complete ass different job at some point every week. And are compelled to do every week content material in a single day that may’t probably be well timed!”

Amid the backlash, Carter briefly deactivated her private Instagram account, which has over 31,000 followers. Her account has been reactivated as of Thursday, with feedback restricted.

Sheldon instructed Insider that Carter took her account down for a couple of hours to guard her psychological well being. “She is brazenly on medicine for her recognized Generalized Anxiousness and Melancholy dysfunction,” she mentioned of her CEO.

On the model’s Instagram account, some feedback on its most up-to-date posts have additionally been restricted or deleted.

Insider has reached out to Carter for remark.