No matter how good and fair your recruitment process is and how good of an employer you are, bad rating or reviews on employer review sites happen. It can be from candidates that want to get back at you because they didn´t get hired or from previous employees that are pissed off because they were let go. Bad reviews can also come from people that don´t want to take revenge but are candidates that simply want to share their experience in the recruitment process or ex-employees on working for you, and not all experiences are always positive.
Although you, as an employer, might know that some of these opinions are not based on the truth at all, potential candidates do check review sites, such as Glassdoor, and monitor social media to see what they can find out about you as an employer. And in today´s digital environment, such review sites can significantly harm your employer brand and therefore should be taken seriously.
Apart from treating your candidates and employees fair, there is not much you can do to prevent bad ratings on employer review sites. It´s simply impossible to keep everybody happy and as an employer, you will have to deal with the results that some unhappy candidates or ex-employees can generate. The way most of these review sites work is that they won´t delete negative reviews, even if they are completely full of lies and are clearly a revenge action. So, you can´t control the fact that your business might get a negative review, but you can control how to deal with these. Here are our 4 tips to deal with bad ratings:
- Monitor & be present
The first thing you should do is monitoring what is being written about your company on the review sites. Therefore, make sure you have a profile and keep an eye on your company´s page to see what is being written about you. This will not only give you the chance to respond appropriately but you can also use the data there for an action plan. For example, if many candidates write about the lack of personal touch during the interview process, this is something you can take action on.
- Respond to criticism
Next to monitoring what is being said about your business, you will probably want to respond to some of the negative reviews. This is a very delicate matter and in some cases, silence might be the best response. However, in the cases where you do wish to respond, make sure to reply in a way that shows that as an employer you are truly committed to improving. No matter how unfair the review is, stay calm and keep it polite. Thank them for their feedback and apologize if their experience was negative before explaining how your company looks at and works on this topic.
- Involve current employees in responding
This is sensitive because asking your employees to respond with something positive to a bad review might backfire in the sense that it can look very rehearsed and fake. However, you can ask some of your current top employees to write a review or encourage your employees to respond to negative reviews online if they don´t agree with them.
- Stay in touch with your employees
To prevent bad reviews from ex-employees it is important to stay in close contact with your current employees. Use a place on the intranet, in your HRM system or on a closed social media group where employees can express their concerns before they turn to external review sites.
How do you fix bad ratings on business review sites? We would love to read your comments!
