70% of people look at reviews before making a decision – Don’t miss out on hiring top talent because of 1 negative review. 

Having negative reviews regards your services are bad, but it’s even worse if the bad review is left by an ex (or current) employee. Platforms like Glassdoor enables (and encourages) employees to leave reviews on their workplace. While this can be helpful, it can also be detrimental if the review is negative.

Any enthusiastic candidate will complete thorough research into a company before they agree to work for them. 46% of Glassdoor members read reviews before speaking with a company or the person in charge of hiring. A single negative review left by an employee of your firm could be powerful enough to make them withdraw their application. As a result, you could be missing out on the top talent!

In the unfortunate event that this happens to you, you will want to be prepared and know how to deal with it effectively.

How To Deal With Negative Glassdoor Reviews:

• Don’t Just Ignore It – If there’s just one thing to take away from this post, it’s this! By ignoring it, you’re allowing the problem to escalate.
• Remain Professional – Don’t let the review get you all hot-headed. Remaining professional and respectful is the best approach to have. You want to avoid the problem from escalating and forming into a personal battle.
• Address The Specific Issue – Beating around the bush is not going to solve anything. Depending on how much detail has been provided in the review, use this to resolve the issue or provide a solution. If the review lacks detail, respond allowing the reviewer to contact you providing more information.
• Stay True To Yourself/ Your Company Values – One bad review doesn’t mean your company as a whole is bad. Stick to your true authentic self and remind yourself of your company values – do they help you in this situation?
• Check For Errors Before Posting Response – The last thing you want is to be posting a response and have embarrassing spelling errors. The first rule of professionalism is perfect spelling and grammar.
• Use This As A Learning Curve – Use this review to make your business stronger by taking time to check that your employee policies & procedures are up to industry standards and that your current employees have the chance to raise any concerns.
• Ask Your Current Employees To Leave A Review –  In the hope that your current employees haven’t got a bad word to say about your company, it can be a great benefit to get their thoughts and feelings into a Glassdoor review. Should you have received any negative reviews recently, these should hopefully outweigh them and make the potential candidate realise it was one bad opinion in a pool of good opinions.

Even if you have never received a negative review, it can be beneficial to collect employee reviews on Glassdoor to help future candidates understand your company better and solidify the idea that it is the correct working environment for them.

If you believe the negative review you’ve been left is spam or websites like Glassdoor allow you to report these. In this situation, they will take a look at the review and potentially remove it if they think it violates their terms.

Struggling to overcome HR challenges? It might be helpful to have a chat with HR Professional, Paul Palmer. To contact Paul from Coppice HR email paul@coppicehr.com or call 07814 008478.