We live in an era of digital feedback. Whether you’re taking to Twitter after a an online order goes missing, or posting reviews on a TripAdvisor from a recent holiday, we now have the option to vent our feelings at the click of a button, all without an uncomfortable face-to-face conversation! The hospitality industry has adapted well to this trend, often employing full-time staff to manage and improve their TripAdvisor ratings online. So it comes as a surprise that so many employers are still hiding from their Glassdoor presence after over 10 years of the site being live, instead of embracing it as a great opportunity! If you’re guilty of ignoring yours, or don’t even use it all then check out these 5 suggestions to improve your Glassdoor rating, helping you attract and retain top employees!
Get a free Glassdoor account
If you haven’t done this already it’s time to claim your free account. You can do this by posting a review or following this link and entering your details. There are 33 million users of the site globally, so if you want to be seen by potential candidates then it’s worth spending a bit of time in building your account. You can include company information and photos that showcase your company in a positive, but authentic way!
Consider your employer brand
If you haven’t done this already it’s important to have a firm understanding of what the ‘essence’ of your employer brand is, or better yet a solid employer brand architecture in place. Aligning with your corporate values, map out what you believe your key EVP’s are and survey your employees to ensure you’re matching up to where you want to be. Surveys will also help outline the positives of working for you, as well as any areas you could improve upon. This information is vital if you want to build upon your Glassdoor review, because it will act as a guide of what to change internally for the better. The average company is rated 3.3/5 on Glassdoor, so ideally you want to be aiming for 4/5+!
Get those happy employees posting
If you saw a hotel with 100 negative reviews you probably wouldn’t whip out your credit card to book it would you? How about if you saw a hotel with 100,000 positive reviews, and only 100 negative reviews? You’re more likely trust the majority and put those 100 bad reviews down to people being overly fussy! You’ll never be able to stop unhappy employees venting their frustrations, even those companies with the best employer brand reputation will still have an unfortunate employee exit once in a while! If you uncover positive feedback in your employer brand survey, then encourage those employees to leave a review! The more positive reviews there are the less chance a candidate will focus on the few negative ones you may have.
Listen to your feedback
Instead of ducking and diving from a negative review from a current or ex-employee, use it as a chance to learn and improve. Reviews can uncover things that you may not have realised before – whether your reviews uncover an issue with your training and development scheme, or highlight that a lack of flexible working hours is leading to people moving to other companies – there is a lot you can learn from here. As employees can be anonymous on here, you may find they will open up and be more honest than if you were to carry out an internal survey as well.
Reply to feedback
So you’ve got your profile, employees are leaving reviews and you’re starting to take on board feedback to help you improve your employer brand. The next step is to engage and reply to that feedback! Try not to be too defensive, it’s much better to respond and demonstrate action you are taking to change. Glassdoor surveys found that the perception of a company improves with 69% of its users when an executive responds to reviews, so it’s worth investing some time into this! Make sure you have notifications set up so you can act quickly as well!
