Array of JSON in @RequestParam in Spring MVC

I am sending the following JSON to a controller and trying to access it but i am getting "The request sent by the client was syntactically incorrect." error message.

JSON :

{
"employees": [
{
    "firstName": "John",
    "lastName": "Doe"
},
{
    "firstName": "Anna",
    "lastName": "Smith"
},
{
    "firstName": "Peter",
    "lastName": "Jones"
}
]}

controller:

@RequestMapping(value="/xyz",produces="application/json",consumes="application/json",method=RequestMethod.POST)
public String sendEmpDetails(@RequestBody List<Employee> employeeList){
    return "xyz";
}

What am i doing wrong here?