Glassdoor and Indeed are powerful platforms that allow both current and former employees to share their experiences, opinions, and insights on every aspect of your business. These reviews can cover everything from compensation, hours, advancement, and culture. These reviews can significantly impact a company’s reputation and heavily influence potential job seekers deciding whether or not to apply for an open position with your company.
Having current employees leave honest and constructive reviews on Glassdoor and Indeed can be a valuable part of your online reputation strategy. While requesting reviews should be handled delicately, doing so in the appropriate manner can help maintain trust with your employees while strengthening your reputation on these sites. Buckingham explains the best way to ask for reviews while adhering to platform policies.
Importance of Glassdoor and Indeed on Online Reputation
Glassdoor and Indeed have grown incredibly influential for people looking for new jobs. Both platforms are allowed to post profiles about your company and allow former employees to leave reviews, whether you consent to it or not. Both Glassdoor and Indeed also have significant online traffic to their sites.
For example, Glassdoor reports that they have 67 million unique visitors a month to their website. In addition, they report having 2.5 million company profiles on their main site. Finally, Glassdoor states that 83% of their users are actively looking for jobs, or, at least, are open to new employment possibilities.
Indeed reports that they have 350 million unique visitors a month to their site. Indeed also reports having 245 million resumes of active job seekers on their site at any given time.
These statistics drive home the importance of maintaining a positive presence on these platforms, as anyone considering applying for a job with your company is likely to research your company using these platforms. With that in mind, it is important to consider the best approach in asking your current employees to leave reviews on these platforms to help bolster your reputation.
How to Ask Employees for Reviews
Since your reputation on these websites is so vital for maintaining your company’s reputation, it is important to ask your employees to leave honest feedback on these platforms. While making this request might seem awkward at first, there are several steps you can take to effectively encourage your employees to leave reviews.
1. Always Maintain Anonymity
It is incredibly important to inform your employees that their anonymity will be maintained by the platform and that you respect that anonymity as well. The review portion of both Glassdoor and Indeed is based on anonymity, and both platforms take that concept very seriously. Making sure that your employees know that the feedback will be anonymous will ensure their comfort in leaving a review.
2. Explain the Reason for the Request
It is important to share with your employees the reason you are making the request for a review. Demonstrating to the employee the importance of Glassdoor and Indeed can help in demonstrating the need for honest feedback.
3. Make Personalized Requests
While you should not single out certain employees to leave reviews, it is important to personalize the request. Requesting each employee to leave a review on Glassdoor and Indeed can be done during individual meetings, performance reviews, or other one-on-one situations. This allows you to more effectively explain the reasons discussed above for why you are making the request.
What to Avoid
Employee reviews are a great way to see into a small window of working at a company. They’re meant to be helpful, authentic, and insightful. But, when asking your employees to leave a review, there are specific things not to do.
One thing to make sure you avoid is incentivizing an employee to leave a positive review. This is not only against Glassdoor and Indeed policy, but it will also undermine the trust of the employee that the feedback will be well received and considered. This may be through monetary compensation, a promotion or title change, extra time off, and so on.
You also want to avoid making your employees feel guilted or pressured into leaving a review, as this takes away the authenticity of said review. Making sure the employee is comfortable leaving the review, without fear of retribution for honest feedback, will help instill confidence in the employee to leave a review.
After You’ve Received Reviews
Once you have made these requests to your employees, it’s important to monitor your reviews on both Glassdoor and Indeed. Once new reviews start coming in, make sure you are constructively responding to each and every review. Remember, your audience for your response is not the reviewer, but the job seeker who is researching your company.
