When a company advertises its job vacancies, you only have the job description and the impression you get from interviews to get a feel for the company. Marketing creates the brand and sometimes its’ values, but all this can be mastered to give you what might be a false, or misleading, impression of that company.
However, employee and customer reviews are now being given much more weight and gaining tractiong as they become key parts of the recruitment process and customer service.
Review sites, like Tripadvisor, and online stores, such as Amazon, that rely heavily on customer reviews, have helped to create a culture of reliance on peer reviews that all businesses now have to contend with.
And it doesn’t just stop with customer reviews; sites like Glassdoor have made employee reviews just as important in helping to shape the reputation of a business. But, is there anything that businesses can do to manage these reviews, or are they better served by simply doing everything within their power to ensure that employee experiences remain positive?
Reputation matters
The rise of social media, and the 24-hour news cycle that goes with it, has created a huge demand for stories, especially controversial ones. Business leaders aren’t immune from scrutiny, and they don’t need to be the CEO of Microsoft for their opinions, actions, or inaction, to cause a stir online.
Taxi app, Uber, had a turbulent 2014 rounded off with dinner party sniping by a company executive hitting social media headlines, and causing a headache for the CEO, who was castigated for apologising yet taking no decisive action against the executive. A comment that would have, in the past, been shared by a circle of acquaintances, spread around the world due to the reach of social media and the need to tell the story.
The question is, how do people looking to work for the business, or thinking about becoming a customer of the brand, respond to these stories? How does it shape their perception of the organisation?
You just need to look at businesses like Amazon to see the potential impact of opinion. When workers complained about their working conditions, and pay, many consumers pledged to boycott the brand, which was predicted to cost the company £2.5m over the Christmas period in 2014. Of course, we don’t know whether these people were already regular customers of the company, or how loyal they were to the brand, but it’s clear that employee opinion helped to shape the public perception of the business.
Whether business leaders like it or not, employees (and customers) are shaping the reputation of their brands right now through online review sites. They allow interview attendees, former and current employees to rate and review the business in a number of areas, but they also allow businesses to respond, to claim their profile and present a fuller picture over what might be an isolated event. This isn’t something that should be ignored. Businesses need to take any opportunity they can to engage with and address detrimental reviews with a positive response, and this needs to become an important part of the marketing mix.
Managing employee reviews
Monitor what’s being said about your business online. Even if you don’t use social media yourself, your customers and potential employees do. All businesses should have News Alerts set up to monitor mentions, with larger businesses taking things a step further and implementing social listening tools to monitor and help respond to comments about the business that may affect its’ reputation.
Encourage employees to post reviews. That’s not to say that businesses should strong-arm people into posting glowing verses on their job. There shouldn’t be a problem with people posting their honest opinion of their employer. In fact, if the business is reading about an issue online that they were unaware of, it speaks of a greater problem that needs to be addressed. Employees should feel comfortable enough to address issues internally before taking the matter online.
Listen, respond and act. Many review sites allow the company being reviewed the chance to respond, and businesses should take advantage of this. Not with a canned “we’re listening” response, but by addressing the points raised and showing the reviewer that you understand their point, and will look into their concerns. The issues raised should be considered seriously and fed back to the relevant teams and people. If the leaders of the business want their words to be taken seriously, internally and externally, they need to show that they can improve as a result of addressing the concerns raised.
Create a team culture by celebrating business successes as a team, and showing that you value every contribution. For example, sales teams are often lauded for bringing in an influx of new business, but what of the sales support team? Does their contribution get recognised? A dysfunctional office culture usually leads to unhappy employees, and this will be reflected in their public comments about their employer, and ultimately in how a potential customer sees the brand.
When we talk about employee reviews and how it affects the reputation of the company, we’re really talking about managing the way that a business responds to these reviews. Respond poorly, and the company reputation may be tarnished to say the least. Leave negative reviews with no response at all and the business risks opening up a can of worms for other disgruntled people to follow suit. A positive, constructive response to a negative review can show that the business is listening and is willing to improve as an employer and as a brand.
By Richard Harrison, MD, UK of Reputation.com.
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