The Easiest Way To Remove Negative Reviews From Glassdoor
Entrepreneurs often think of the glass door as a welcoming gateway into the inner workings of a company, providing insights into new, unharnessed territories.
When it comes to your company’s negative reviews on Glassdoor, the phrase rings more than true, but it no longer leaves companies with a shiny and polished reputation as one might hope.
Negative Glassdoor reviews can hinder and sideline entrepreneurs and companies, debilitating their reputation, recruitment strategies, and opportunities for new business ventures — sometimes regardless of company size or seniority.
If Glassdoor reviews are hurting your company, here are the steps on how to remove negative Glassdoor reviews, and assess and manage your company’s reputation so that you can take advantage of future business goals with precision and a clean slate.
Glassdoor ratings can heavily influence the trajectory of your company
No longer can companies ignore negative or misleading reviews, thinking they have minimal to no impact on their company and leadership strategies. Many employers think of Glassdoor as merely a career community site for employees to review and detail their current and former companies of employment.
The site itself is a crucial way for companies to respond and connect with employees while positively building their reputation. In addition, Glassdoor also conducts information on workplace salaries, benefits along with other significant industry and workplace research.
According to a 2016 Glassdoor U.S. Site Survey, 70% of people now look up Glassdoor reviews for a prospective company as they search or apply for a job. The site garners over 57 million unique visitors each month on Glassdoor’s website and mobile site combined, highlighting the importance of the company as a sounding board for employees.
Candidates seek information that can help them determine what it’s like to work for a specific company, but also the potential for career development, flexibility in work/life balance, and workplace culture. Employees should consult with an experienced lawyer to determine discrimination in the workplace. While job sites may be especially important for Millennials, job seekers of all ages are using sites like Glassdoor to search your company and how they treat their employees.
At least 60% of people won’t apply to businesses with a 1-star review. Other research shows that at least half of consumers won’t conduct business with companies who have a Glassdoor review of less than 4.0/5.
Reports also show that at least 84% of people trust online customer reviews as much as a friend’s recommendation, showing the influence and credibility of online review systems. In all, Glassdoor is a great way for companies to assess their brand, employee engagement, work culture, and how their company compares to competitors in the same niche and industry. In fact, 62% of respondents agree that their opinion of a company improves if they respond to negative or positive Glassdoor reviews.
This kind of impact illustrates why the desire to remove negative reviews from Glassdoor is so common (and understandable) for many business owners. Achieving a great company rating can impact a company in a number of ways.
A perfect company rating doesn’t exist
Earning a perfect Glassdoor score is nearly impossible. Even Google, an enviable place to work, doesn’t have a perfect Glassdoor score. In fact, an average company on Glassdoor holds a rating of 3.3 out of 5. When negative reviews roll in, that pristine glass door companies attempt to leave ajar for their employees can become muddied very quickly.
Glassdoor itself adheres to a strict policy of review management. Employees can only leave reviews that follow community guidelines for posting. To ensure legitimate reviews, those who post must certify their employee relationships and validate their email addresses. Glassdoor personnel and algorithms will then review submissions for the website’s rules.
Glassdoor itself encourages employees to write well-balanced, fair reviews that highlight both positive and negative aspects of the job. The guidelines state that users can’t post confidential knowledge, threatening language, defamatory remarks, or otherwise false information. However, that won’t stop negative or vengeful employees, past or present, from venting their frustrations online.
To determine whether your company remains on good terms with your current employee base, you’ll have to find your average Glassdoor score and the total number of reviews. Next, determine if the number of negative reviews is a small or large percentage of the total number of employees that work for you. If the amount is small, it’s not a significant representation of most employee experiences. In the other case, you may want to rethink your HR management and company culture initiatives.
Of course, employers may be shaken by their first negative Glassdoor review, especially if they think it’s unjustified. As a result, companies often want to learn how to remove negative Glassdoor reviews. Don’t worry, not matter your situation you have plenty of options.
How Can I Remove A Bad Glassdoor Review?
So you’ve gotten enough negative Glassdoor reviews to make an impact on your company’s reputation. Unfortunately, most companies don’t notice they have negative reviews until they start to pile up.
A negative review can dramatically debilitate a company’s ability to grow revenue, recruit impressionable, top-tier talent, and attract lucrative investors. So, how do you remove negative reviews on Glassdoor?
Unfortunately, Glassdoor does not remove negative reviews unless there are legal reasons to remove them. This means your options for directly removing a bad Glassdoor review are limited (we’ll explain other possibilities below).
As both human and robot analytics reviews all employee posts, its is likely to have met the standards and guidelines of an acceptable post. However, if you feel that the content of a review is out of line, you can contact Glassdoor to determine if they have the right to take it down. Glassdoor may have the ability to:
Flag Questionable Content: If an employee does post any false, misleading, or defamatory content, the company or subject of the harmful review may contact a Glassdoor representative to flag the content. If the terms are violated, Glassdoor will flag content as a violation. It will be reviewed by moderators who will then have it removed from the site if deemed inappropriate.
However, since Glassdoor does have strict and thorough vetting and guideline process for reviews, it is unlikely Glassdoor’s employees or natural language processing algorithms will flag and remove bad reviews already published on their site without good reason for community guideline violations or due to legitimate legal consequences.
This means you have to think outside the box
Although you may have negative reviews on your businesses’ Glassdoor profile, there are numerous ways to use the site as a promotional tool while helping to suppress bad reviews naturally. This will accomplish the same thing as removing a negative review from Glassdoor, since no one will notice it within a group of positive reviews.
Since getting them to flag and remove content is highly unlikely, as well as a tedious and slow process if it does pan out, these are other beneficial approaches to harness Glassdoors’ review tools and reinvent your company’s online reputation:
Step 1: Optimize Your Glassdoor Profile
Employees aren’t the only people able to create profiles on Glassdoor. A free employer account (verified when you sign up with your company’s email account) allows you to optimize your update public company information, view analytics and profile visits to your company’s page, and respond to both positive and negative reviews.
Pro tip: If you want to stay ahead of the game, a subscription also allows you to add more details to your company’s profile. For example, you can feature a positive review of your choice, along with your company’s details and jobs on competitors’ pages. The strategic step can help you become more engaged with your employees and a large pool of talented job seekers.
Step 2: Respond to Positive and Negative Reviews
Your next step to improve your company’s Glassdoor rating is to start responding to positive and negative reviews. Responding to the negative glassdoor reviews is one positive start to redeem a company or CEO’s reputation. Now, 62% of people report their perception of a company improves if they respond to negative Glassdoor reviews.
This little trick can help soften the blow and public perception, so if you can’t remove a bad Glassdoor review you should always make this a priority.
Pro tip: When a company takes the time out of their schedule to respond to a negative review, it highlights their willingness to find a solution to a problem, even if that problem could have been handled differently at the time. In fact, ignoring negative reviews only emphasizes an employee’s complaints and may also indicate the company doesn’t care about its employees. However, personalized responses with sincere apologies can provide the employee with the autonomy to get the help he or she needs. Potential job candidates may find this an attribute of the company.
Don’t forget to reply to the positive reviews, too! Happy employees often feel that a personal response from the company shows how they go above-and-beyond extends a sense of appreciation and value that can take a satisfied employee to a brand ambassador.
Step #3: Encourage Employees to Leave Reviews
People who want to complain are more likely to use Glassdoor to vent their frustrations and dissatisfaction with their role and relationships within the company. It’s harder to convince employees who are satisfied with their jobs to go online and leave a review. One way to promote positive employee engagement within your company is to send review requests. In fact, Glassdoor encourages employers to ask their employees to offer fair and constructive reviews online.
The best ways to motivate employees to leave reviews include:
- Offering guidance into the review process and guaranteed anonymity
- Letting them know how it helps the company
- Allowing them the choice to review
- Asking them at the right time and place
- Informing them on the review process
Many times, companies hire third-party agencies with expertise in review management to ask employees on their behalf, so the request seems more business-minded and less personal.
Instead of trying to remove negative Glassdoor reviews, they can be counteracted when you ask responsible, long-term employees for their support and insights into the companies review process. Ask marketing staff, managers, and tenured colleagues to write some of the first reviews on the site. Current employees who have stayed with the company for a long time are more likely to give positive reviews and offset the number of negative reviews.
Pro tip: Avoid asking all your employees to review at once. An inundation of positive reviews looks suspicious all at once. Besides, negative reviews tend to filter in at incremental paces so that the positive reviews will get buried underneath newer, negative ones.
Remember to be as helpful, authentic, and transparent during this process. Make sure you give exact directions to your employees and ensure that their privacy will remain protected throughout the review process.
Step #4: Motivate Review Requests with Positivity and Team-Building Moments
There are convenient times to ask your colleagues for help with Glassdoor reviews. Specific staff members may be more enthusiastic to provide reviews after they’ve had a professional success or after a team goal was met. In addition, creating a positive corporate culture can remind employees of the benefits of working at your company. If you offer promotions, recognize good work, or plan fun group activities, your employees feel more respected and appreciated. And one more brilliant tip that we can give you is to always reward your employees, as that is a brilliant way of motivating them. We signed up to a fantastic flexible employee benefits platform recently and it’s incredible how well it’s worked, so that’s our recommendation for employee benefits.
Pro tip: Think about investing more time to connect with employees, ask them their opinions, and mentor them if needed. Scheduling events that allow professional interoffice relationships to blossom can help grow foster satisfaction in the workplace. A critical practice is to develop review request language after these vital team-building moments occur. When an employee experiences a professional win or bonding moment, then make sure to contact them directly with a review request. Employees will feel more willing to give glowing reviews for a company which shows that they value them.
Step #5: Adapt your Business Model Based on Reviews
Since Glassdoor reviews are anonymous, employers can receive honest and detailed feedback on their strengths and shortcomings. These insights often provide companies with the ability to make informed decisions on how to address anything from complaints, compliments, to constructive suggestions.
As anonymous feedback allows the employee air their most earnest concerns, business leaders can discuss trends that are both positive and worrisome. If you notice that the workforce is excited by small perks, like Summer Fridays, it’s worth offering remaining flexible and offering similar benefits in the future. It can also show how the thoughtful side of the company.
Pro tip: Assess where workplace culture, HR policies, or other inclusive strategies that can help build rapport and satisfaction for a positive career experience for all employees. Your company and its leadership are only as good as how you treat and communicate with your employees. Employers have a unique opportunity to make the workplace a more educational and positive place for everyone. If companies stay focused on supporting and providing positive experiences for their employees, they can even end up on Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work list.
The Best Approach: Hire A Reputation Specialist
It’s hard for most companies to achieve a 4+ Glassdoor rating without a review management strategy. It’s hard to prompt happy employees to give reviews on a whim. Most likely, on a job review site, you’re going to find disgruntled former employees.
Creating a review management process for your company allows your business to beat inherent negative bias and help potential employees make the right career choice.
But if your company’s strategy focuses on pressuring your employees into writing positive reviews for your Glassdoor campaign, then you are not only defying Glassdoor’s policies, but the reputation management process may be considered null-and-void in the future, since you’re creating an inauthentic and demanding environment for your workforce.
One way to immediately counteract negative Glassdoor reviews is to hire an external agency to help with branding and online reputation management. As part of this service, Glassdoor review management can help boost your online reputation, credibility, and overall score.
As mentioned above, timing and employee buy-in are essential for negating negative online reviews. But creating and executing a strategy takes a lot of expertise and cohesive planning. It often becomes a full-time position for someone at a company. This way you understands how to remove bad Glassdoor reviews, and when other methods are needed instead.
Instead, companies may want to manage their Glassdoor reviews by hiring some outside help. In fact, utilizing such an agency can provide your company with many great insights into the review process and how to connect with your employees in more satisfactory ways going forward.
An external agency can help you manage the Glassdoor review process in three key areas:
Economics:
If you want to save time and money, an outside agency may be the easiest route to go. Companies should determine the cost of a salary for an in-house position. Dividing that salary by 12 months can offer a comparative analysis to an agency’s quote. The average HR coordinator in the US makes approximately $48,000 a year.
However, businesses need to take into account the cost of recruiting for the job, including advertising and the recruitment fee which now stands at around 20 percent of the employee’s salary. Also, the employer’s tax cost, benefits, and health insurance need to be factored in.
Costs for hiring and retaining talent also need to be determined. Finding the figures for each step of the process can determine if there is economic value to your company. Although, most of the time hiring an external agency has many economic benefits that can save you both time and money.
Employee engagement:
It can be a hardship for some leaders or companies to send a review request to employees. Often, reputational issues tied to corporations can be extremely sensitive topics and its a challenge to ask every employee to review without coming off as desperate or coercive.
Often companies need to take into consideration that most employees at companies are motivated to leave positive reviews if and when they understand how it helps the company. They also need to be ensured that their reviews are kept anonymous. They should also not feel pressured to leave a review.
However, working with an outside agency can help negate the uncomfortable aspects of asking. When the hired agency asks employees on behalf of the employer to leave Glassdoor reviews, it can appear as a more authentic goal rather than a disingenuous chore. External agencies often extend the legitimacy and confidentiality that often comes with independent parties, so that employees have a more organic time believing that the company is genuinely looking for feedback instead of using each employee as a means to end a problem.
As mentioned before, employees are encouraged to be honest, so employers need to make sure they extend respect to every part of the review process in their everyday and overall management process.
When the company’s business team understands that they are addressing the problem thoughtfully and professionally, then they’ll be much more likely to give accurate, constructive, and positive feedback on the review.
Expertise:
If your company is looking for help with Glassdoor, it’s probable that your team hasn’t worked with the review process before. Determining the best economic decision can be more complicated than just comparing salaries to the agency quote. If you want to manage a well-thought review management campaign, business leaders will also have to take into account the expertise that’s required for the job.
Ask yourself if your employees have confronted review management issues before. It’s important to assess the learning curb that occurs as the reviewer learns the necessary software and while you implement a company-wide review process. Employers also have to think about the possibility of the situation becoming worse while the team discovers the review process through trial and error.
Companies always need to stay on top of their Glassdoor reviews promptly since competitors are just a click away. When hiring an external agency, it’s best to think about how to avoid that learning curve or lengthy experiment in the workplace. In the long run, hiring an external agency can quickly and efficiently tackle those negative reviews with quality precision.
For any business, the best bet is to save your time and energy to focus on your employees and business strategy. Leaving the expertise to an external agency can more quickly provide the feedback you need to make essential changes and fix any internal workplace issues that are causing negative Glassdoor reviews. Overall, the data you receive can help you adjust your business strategy to help benefit everyone that makes your company a success.
A Better Glassdoor Page Can Lead to Better Opportunities
An improved Glassdoor can lead to a myriad of opportunities for your company. However, it won’t get better without a happy work culture that supports the efforts and lifestyles of individual employees. It’s necessary to improve your HR and workplace strategies. Then also have a look at giving your staff excellent employee benefits as that is a sure-fire way of making them happier. Otherwise, you won’t truly remove fake or negative Glassdoor reviews for good.
Organically and strategically addressing the issues that have caused negative reviews can lead to many opportunities down the road and help you and your company avoid a reputational nightmare. Instead, your Glassdoor reviews can become a beneficial recruiting tool that helps you build your reputation in and outside of the workplace.
In the long-run, you’ll be able to make that Glassdoor shine like new again for better business opportunities and prospects.