If you’re having difficulties hiring top talents, you might want to look into your brand as an employer. There’s no better place to get a better picture of your employer branding than Glassdoor.
Glassdoor is for employers and employees alike — a space where both are given voices to share their stories. Similarly, job seekers can find jobs to apply for posted by employers. But as with any review platform, reviews can be positive and negative. Let’s talk about the latter in this blog.
The Impact of Negative Reviews on Glassdoor for Employers
While Glassdoor reviews are exclusive for employees, your talent acquisition is not the only one affected by negative reviews on the platform. If you often get employee feedback but the kind that’s damaging to your business, here are the business aspects that would be impacted.
Talent Acquisition
Your Glassdoor company reviews are crucial to recruiting the best talents. Just like potential customers, job seekers will scour the internet to know more about your business. So if you’re bombarded with negative Glassdoor reviews, you can be certain job searchers will skip applying to your business or reject your offer.
Talent Retention
Similarly, negative Glassdoor employee reviews translate to talent satisfaction and, thus, retention. So even if you successfully hire top talent, they will eventually get tired of associating themselves with a company that has a bad reputation. As such, responding to negative reviews is essential; act on matters mentioned in reviews.
Customer Acquisition
Creating a stellar first impression is crucial to acquiring not only talents but also customers. Before a curious consumer chooses to engage with your company, they will research your brand and likely discover your Glassdoor page.
Customer Retention
Customer retention is a business’s ability to maintain a profitable relationship with its customers. But unlike new businesses, customer retention proved more cost-effective and with higher returns. It’s reported that a 5% increase in customer retention results in a 25-95% revenue increase (Bain & Company).
Ultimately, these affected business aspects translate to your company’s finances.
Why Employees Are Leaving Negative Glassdoor Company Reviews
When you encourage and get employee feedback, you’re at risk of receiving the dreaded negative review. However, it doesn’t mean you should stop your review generation efforts. Instead, identify the cause for such reviews and address them.
Disconnect from management. Oftentimes, you’ll find Glassdoor company reviews mentioning poor leadership or management. As with any business, a chasm between management and employees can happen. The responsibility to initiate building relationships within the company lies with managers. Without communication, your staff members may feel disregarded. Teams also feel as though they can’t voice their ideas and concerns if there is a disconnect between them and management.
Unhealthy company culture. A toxic work environment is one where unhealthy practices are in place, encouraging toxic behaviors and disagreements among team members. Team productivity also suffers as a result, as toxic environments rob employees of their ability to function efficiently and effectively. You want your business to steer clear of this issue as employee dissatisfaction from toxic cultures motivates them to leave negative Glassdoor employee reviews and search for alternative employment.
Lack of recognition. Despite the benefits of recognition, a recent Gallup and Workhuman survey found companies in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland don’t value recognition as an employee retention tool. The study found 81% of business leaders say recognition isn’t a major priority of their companies. Although employees are only doing what’s expected of them, it wouldn’t hurt to offer recognition or guidance. When you recognize your employees, you consequently let them know their hard work doesn’t go unnoticed.
Lack of flexible work arrangements. In your online review monitoring on Glassdoor for employers, you may be noticing the subject “lack of flexibility” as a common pain point for employees. While we’ve overcome the worst of the pandemic, flexible work arrangements are something the workforce is adamant about. Considering fuel inflation, people seek to work for companies that offer flexibility, particularly those that would allow them to work in the comfort of their homes. With this, many businesses have gone “hybrid,” wherein employees only report in-office for a couple of days a week.
Tips on Responding to Negative Reviews (Review Response Strategy)
Seven in 10 survey respondents said that after reading companies’ replies to negative Glassdoor reviews, their opinion changed (Glassdoor). So a proper review response strategy in place is instrumental in providing the social proof job seekers want. Here are tips for responding to negative reviews many reputation management consultants swear by:
1. Get Your Facts Straight
When you receive a negative employee review, it’s essential to take the statements seriously, as such reviews often contain more than mere opinions. Meet with key personnel and everyone involved so you can immediately determine what you’re dealing with.
2. Respond at the Appropriate Time
While you look into it, don’t forget to let the poster know. Reputation management services experts strongly advise against leaving a negative review unanswered for long as it has repercussions. Still, reacting prematurely to a negative review is equally detrimental.
3. Stay Professional
Handling negative reviews can be daunting. To make sure your brand is represented calmly and professionally in your response, dedicate a team. Having a dedicated team responsible for monitoring and responding to reviews eliminates the risk of poorly written responses.
4. Express Gratitude
In online review monitoring and review generation, it’s important to express your gratitude. Saying thanks communicates that your business is open to receiving feedback. As such, potential employees will appreciate your openness and receptivity to all kinds of feedback.
5. Move the Conversation Offline
Remember that you have the option to take the conversation offline if need be. But be sure to provide a brief yet satisfactory initial response. And in your initial response, include direct contact information where the poster can reach you and openly discuss sensitive matters.
6. Flag False Reviews
Glassdoor for employers is an unbiased review platform, so it doesn’t permit you to remove negative reviews on your own. Instead, you can flag a negative review if it goes against its guidelines. For example, false remarks and vulgar language are considered violations.
Removing Glassdoor Reviews
As we go over review response tips, here are some helpful links to further guide you in removing Glassdoor reviews.
How and When To Get Employee Feedback (Tips To Get More Reviews From Employees)
As to when to ask for Glassdoor employee reviews, reputation management consultants suggest it depends on you. But here are some ideas to help you get more reviews.
When to ask for feedback:
- After onboarding
- After three months
- After a good separation
How to ask for feedback:
- Notice board
- In-person
- Meetings
- Reputation management tool
Rize Reputation Management Services: Glassdoor Review Generation and Monitoring
Whether you run a small or large company, managing online reviews is not an easy feat, especially if you have been hit with reputational damage and need a brand image repair. Still, it’s definitely worthwhile due to lucrative benefits. That’s why we are committed to being the best reputation management partner at Rize Reviews, providing a full-service approach for each of our clients.
Our brand consultants employ a custom online review monitoring and reputation management tool. With it, our team helps businesses overcome challenges that come with online reputation management, such as not having enough reviews and not having the capacity to respond.
If you want to see our expertise and tool in action, book a free demo.
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