When choosing an employer, job seekers are sure to look up reviews about him online. If they come across nothing but negative information about the company, they are unlikely to have any desire to become part of its team. Such a situation is especially relevant for candidates with a highly demanded specialty or those applying for top-level positions.
We talked with the Reputation House agency about the importance of employee reviews. This company has been working in the field of reputation marketing for more than 10 years, has hundreds of successful cases, and has offices in 8 countries around the world. The company’s employees know how to not only restore a positive employer image but also build it from scratch.
Reputation House: employee reviews are vital for your HR brand
If a company has a bad image, it will face two major problems:
- Decrease in the influx of experienced candidates. As a result, you will get responses from applicants who are ready to take on any job. Their level of qualification is often low, they are not valued on the labor market, so the only thing that matters to them is finding some work. Thus, your staff will start getting filled with low-skilled personnel who poorly perform their duties and are not motivated to improve and make efforts. Accordingly, this negatively affects the company’s income, it becomes less competitive and loses its position in the market.
- Increased costs of finding suitable candidates. According to the experience of Reputation House agency, reviews with a negative tone make HR managers spend more finances, time, efforts, and other resources. They have to use different strategies and sources to actually find qualified professionals.
Negativity posted about a company as an employer can reduce trust in the brand as a whole. If potential partners or customers see it, they will have a reasonable question. How can you trust a business, cooperate with it, or buy its products if it can’t solve problems with its staff?
One should keep in mind human psychology: people are more willing to find time to write a negative review, as they share good reviews much less often, says Reputation House. Statistics also confirm this: 15 Americans are ready to share their bad experiences, whereas only 11 people will express a positive opinion.
What to do with negative employee reviews: recommendations from Reputation House
The main task is to minimize the consequences so that candidates find verified information in the search results, which tells about the good sides of the brand. Search Engine Reputation Marketing, or SERM, which Reputation House has been working with for many years, is designed to solve this problem.
It may seem that it is solely a matter of removing negativity. But this method is used only when the company can justify the unreliability of the review, and the website will comply and remove the comment. In some rare cases, the problem gets resolved through the court, but usually pre-trial measures are enough.
It is much easier and more effective to push negativity off the page, replacing it with positive and neutral content. With its SERM tools, Reputation House has a precise influence on those resources that need a change of tone. Predominantly, these are review websites, but the agency’s specialists work with forum threads, social media, blogs, and other resources.
Reputation House employees gradually post employee reviews that align with the company’s values and reflect its HR strengths. Work is also being done to respond to negative comments. This helps to show potential candidates that the brand is open to dialog, ready to improve the situation, and takes the team’s opinion into account.
But positive online content alone is not enough to improve a company’s image. It is necessary to make it so that when job seekers enter a query into a search engine, they see resources that contain verified information. For this purpose, Reputation House uses SERM tools to promote the right pages in the top 10 of the search results.
We chose the top 10 for a reason: statistics state that only 5% of people go to the second page of search results. Specialists work with various ranking factors, including behavioral, technical, content, and link factors. As a result, several websites are anchored on the first page at once, creating a positive image of the employer.
Phases of Reputation House’s work with SERM:
- Analysis. It involves selecting the semantic core, analyzing search results, and determining the strengths and weaknesses of the company.
- Strategy development encompasses establishing a set of tools, resources, and channels for conducting work.
- Displacement of negativity by publishing reviews by Reputation House and promoting the right resources to the top.
- Correction. After the work is done, agency staff analyze the results and make adjustments to the next cycle’s strategy. It is normal and necessary to experiment and change the strategy.
How soon will you see the results?
It is impossible to shape or change the tone of the top 10 search results in one month, so SERM in Reputation House is intended to be used for at least several months. As practice shows, the image not only requires restoration but also maintenance. If it is not controlled, new negative information can appear in the search engine, including due to unfair competition.
That’s why Reputation House focuses on systematic work with reviews, aiming to:
- Ensure the company is appealing to relevant candidates.
- Make the right first impression for those who are just getting to know the brand.
- Increase the likelihood of highly qualified employees responding.
- Build protection against the attacks of competitors.
And most importantly, it is necessary to make adjustments in the internal policy of the company and to eliminate errors in interaction with employees so that there are fewer reasons to leave a negative review to begin with.
