by Niamh Madden, Community Manager at Talivest
If you think that you can simply remove negative reviews to improve your Glassdoor score you’re wrong. Glassdoor may be out of your control but employee engagement isn’t.
For HR professionals, Glassdoor can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, positive reviews and a high Glassdoor score help position your business as a great place to work, an organisation that values their employees, helps them progress and really cares.
On the other hand, negative reviews have the opposite and adverse effect. True, some might just be disgruntled individuals. But when the same problems come up again and again (which Glassdoor helpfully draws attention to in their “cons” section), it can really hinder recruitment efforts. It can even cause almost irreparable damage to your employer brand.
Unfortunately, there’s no shortcut to improving your Glassdoor score. You can’t remove negative reviews. And you can’t force people to write positive ones if they don’t feel positively about your organisation. So, what can you do? Here are our 3 top tips for making changes that will help you improve your employee experience – and your Glassdoor score as a result.
Keep your Finger on the Employee Pulse
It’s not just ex-employees who leave negative reviews or a poor Glassdoor score on Glassdoor. Current employees often turn to Glassdoor because of its anonymity – which makes them feel they can be honest. One of the biggest barriers to honesty within your annual employee engagement survey is the fear of being identified and in some way punished as a result..
The most effective way to avoid negative reviews and low ratings on Glassdoor is to address employee concerns and issues swiftly and internally whilst allowing employees to maintain the same level of anonymity. This is why third-party, anonymous employee surveys are key to understanding what really matters to your employees.
Usually, by the time you find out about an issue from Glassdoor, it’s too late. You can take steps to fix it, but it’s out there for prospective talent (and also customers) to see. Pulse surveys that yield quick answers to closed questions from employees allow you to get instant, actionable insight into the wellbeing, mood and culture of your employee base.
You can send these surveys out at a frequency to suit – whether that’s monthly, weekly, or more frequently. These surveys give you access to critical data which help you spot problems and take steps to address them before they become public knowledge.
Smash the Pre-Hire and Onboarding Experience
There’s a little corner of your Glassdoor profile you might forget about – and that’s where people leave reviews about their interview and onboarding experience.
If you’ve got a high proportion of negative interview reviews, chances are you’ll scare off some top talent – a recent study by Randstad found that 66% of new managers have had a new hire accept a job offer only to back out before the start date. If your onboarding process or the time between interview and hire isn’t seamless, and your Glassdoor profile reflects this, then you could find this happening to you. Similarly, if an employee feels that their onboarding process wasn’t very smooth and that joining your organisation was a massive adjustment for them. This could mean more negative reviews.
Many businesses see onboarding as purely a HR function – they coordinate contracts, set up access, welcome the employee – then they’re handed off to their manager, who is tasked with training them up and setting them loose. This whole process can take two weeks max, but the truth is, it often takes employees up to a year to feel settled in your business and their role.
In between the two initial weeks of onboarding and that first work anniversary, what’s happening to them? What opinions are they forming about your business? It’s important to create an onboarding process that helps you stay engaged and stay close to new hires, and it’s only by getting valuable feedback and insight into how they’re adjusting that will allow you to continually improve the employee experience.
Nail the Offboarding Experience
Preparing for an employee to leave your business is just as important as preparing for one to enter it. Creating a great offboarding experience and focusing on maintaining an ongoing connection with employees is crucial. It will help you create employer brand ambassadors who will tell everyone how great it is to work with you – using tools like Glassdoor.
And if they’re valuable, you’d welcome them back in the future for a relevant role too, right? But what about those who are leaving with a less positive view? While you might have done everything you can to create a positive experience for them, it’s down to the individual, the team they’re surrounded by and their manager.
Sometimes, it’s just about making them feel heard, and that their opinion and experience is valued and will be learned from. By adopting proper anonymous surveying tools and building a solid exit questionnaire based on comparable principles, this will encourage your former employees to share honest feedback about issues they’ve experienced and areas for improvement.
If you can then take this feedback and communicate to these individuals how you’re going to go about using this insight to make things better, they’re much less likely to take to Glassdoor to vent their frustrations with your business. Your corporate alumni are a stakeholder in your business – and like other stakeholders they need to be actively managed in a way that’s easy, compliant and effective.
