Providing a great company culture is a surefire way to attract top talent. Employers have a variety of ways to highlight their culture, but some jobseekers prefer a one-stop shop—Glassdoor, which offers them a glimpse into your company’s offerings via reviews and information left by current and former employees.
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When a company doesn’t provide a good culture or doesn’t live up to expectations, current and former employees will turn to Glassdoor to air their grievances and share their experiences. And it’s not just Glassdoor and employees, anyone who has had a bad experience with your company can turn to Facebook, Twitter, Yelp!, and other avenues to share their opinions.
While most “keyboard warriors” are comfortable bad-mouthing companies online, these negative reviews are putting companies at a disadvantage. Bad reviews are a great way to see where things need to improve, but do companies actually read these reviews?
B2B research, ratings, and reviews company, Clutch, released new findings into the world of online reviews. According to these findings, small businesses recognize that their online reputation can impact their success. As a result, 88% of small businesses monitor their reputation online.
Furthermore, 66% of small businesses use social media to monitor their online reputation. Nearly half of small businesses that use social media (48%) also use other platforms to supplement their monitoring efforts.
Who’s Monitoring These Reviews?
Clutch found that small businesses rely on in-house employees or reputation management agencies to monitor their online reputation.
In fact, 44% of respondents use in-house employees to monitor reviews, while 34% use online reputation management tools, like Google Alerts. While 30% of small businesses use a combination of human and digital resources.
Tech-Savvy Millennials More Likely to Embrace Digital Monitoring Tools
Using digital reputation management tools is popular among younger small business owners, Clutch finds. Millennial-owned and -managed small businesses are about evenly split in their use of digital resources (69%) and human resources (68%) to monitor their online reputation.
Generation Xers, however, are more likely to use human resources (75%) than digital resources (57%), and Baby Boomers are also more likely to use human resources (81%) than digital (34%).
No matter which monitoring method you prefer—either human or digital—one thing is clear, businesses who control the narrative have a better opportunity to protect their brand. However, when you start “cheating the system,” not only are you risking your brand’s reputation, you’re also showing potential workers that you may not be as “honest and wholesome” as your brand and company culture projects.
‘Ballot Box Stuffing’ Could Land You in Hot Water
The Clutch survey finds that small businesses can reclaim control over their brand and their brand’s narrative by tracking their online reputation. But whatever you do, don’t start paying workers to share a false narrative, it could blow up in your face.
The Wall Street Journal recently conducted an investigation into false reviews and found that some high-profile employers were paying or pressuring workers to leave positive reviews on Glassdoor. For example, SpaceX was reported to have given away free mugs to employees who left positive reviews.
Glassdoor told The Wall Street Journal that review numbers can jump for a number of reasons, like hiring surges, company events, or internal encouragement. Glassdoor does, however, reject 5% to 10% of reviews citing guideline violations. These guidelines were put in place to curb reviews from fake accounts. A Glassdoor spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal that suspected “ballot box stuffing” could lead Glassdoor to remove the reviews.
While it’s a relief to see companies actually reading these reviews, it’s disheartening to hear some companies bribing workers to say nice things. If your company is enforcing the culture you broadcast to the world, you won’t have to buy your employees’ favor.