Do you ever wonder what your employers think and feel about working for your organization?
Employee reviews sites such as Glassdoor can provide a clear depiction of how your team describes company culture, overall satisfaction, co-workers' relationships, and more.
It is also a platform for job seekers to check out what it’s actually like to work for a company before they accept a job offer or even apply to a new position.
In fact, 83% of Glassdoor users are looking for jobs or are open to new opportunities.
For this reason, many organizations and HR leaders make an effort to improve Glassdoor ratings to help show their company in a positive light. There are many strategies to meet this objective, however, there is one best-kept secret that is the ultimate solution to achieving a 5-star rating.
Skip ahead to see our secret hack, or continue reading to learn more effective tips and tricks for increasing your employee online reviews.
Focus On Your Employee Brand Strategy
Much like your marketing team creates brand messaging around your products and services, the same strategy can be implemented for company culture.
While often underutilized, an employee branding strategy allows organizations to positively change the perception surrounding their business to ensure higher retention and acquisition rates.
Again, think of how marketing teams market products and services. Employer branding is how leadership or HR teams can market their organization so that it’s extremely appealing for job seekers to apply and accept a new position.
To help attract better talent consider the following for your brand strategy:
- What is your unique value proposition?
- What is the overall sentiment around working for your organization?
- What does your onboarding process look like?
By focusing on your employee brand strategy, you will see higher engagement levels from your team. In turn, they are more likely to become brand ambassadors who are eager to write rave online reviews.
💡 The Key Takeaway: The first step in improving Glassdoor ratings is creating an aligned employee brand strategy. It is important to focus on employee wellness and satisfaction so they can become brand ambassadors for people on the hunt for a new job.
Recommended Reading: Fighting the Great Resignation with Employee Surveys
Send a Company Email Asking for Employee Online Reviews
Read with caution!
Directly asking employees for positive reviews is bound to leave a bad impression. It’s impossible for it not to come off as forced.
While you can still motivate your team members to leave a rating, it can not encourage them to only leave a review that’s positive.
Instead, let your team know that you’re interested in both the pros and cons of working for your organization so you can improve and make it a better place to work.
- The good news: Sending a company email asking for Glassdoor reviews can encourage a plethora of new postings
- The bad news: Who’s to say if those new reviews will all be positive? Sending a company-wide email may encourage less than satisfied employees to leave a negative rating. It’s potentially opening the floodgates.
If you’re not scared off by the bad news, I recommend sending the email at a strategic time. Think orientations, company anniversaries, and promotions.
Luckily, Drive Research has a better solution where your team can gather employee feedback – but be assured that only satisfied employees are sent to your Glassdoor company profile.
More on that in a bit 😉
💡 The Key Takeaway: When organizations think of ways to get more online employee reviews, they often turn to a company-wide email where employees are encouraged to provide a rating. However, there is no guarantee that these reviews will be positive. If handled incorrectly, your strategy can backfire.
Personally Respond to EVERY Glassdoor Review
While it’s hard to think some people dread coming to work, that could very well be the case.
Some people are too timid to share their feedback face-to-face, so they rely on online rating sites to let out their frustrations.
And even after someone leaves an organization, they may still feel inclined to leave a rating that warns future employers from working at your establishment.
To soften the blow, it is recommended to respond to every review – especially the negative ones.
Put yourself in the shoes of a job seeker scanning Glassdoor for company reviews. How would you feel if you saw two different instances of the same review?
Scenario One
- Employee: “There’s a lot of pressure to achieve sales goals that are nearly impossible to meet. I've talked to my manager about these expectations and he doesn’t seem to care that I'm suffering.”
Scenario Two
- Employee: “There’s a lot of pressure to achieve sales goals that are nearly impossible to meet. I've talked to my manager about these expectations and he doesn’t seem to care that I'm suffering.”
- Company Response: “We appreciate your honest feedback and are sorry to hear that management is not providing the support you expected. We care deeply about our employees and want to make sure they feel like their goals are attainable. If you feel like you are not getting the support you need to succeed, please contact our HR team so that we can help.”
That kind of response can make a world of difference. Heck, any response can! Be sure to reply to all reviews whether they are negative or positive.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Negative Glassdoor ratings are almost unavoidable. However, if you take the time to respond to employees in an understanding and actionable way, people reading the exchanges will have more faith in working for your organization.
The Secret Hack to Improving Glassdoor Ratings
I’ll cut to the chase. Perhaps the easiest way to get more positive Glassdoor ratings is by surveying employees
Here is how the process works when using a third-party for employee surveys like Drive Research.
- Send our team a list of employee email addresses. This can be done on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis depending on your hiring processes.
- Drive Research invites your employees to take a survey where they’ll provide feedback on working for your organization.
- Our employee survey company utilizes a survey platform that automatically gauges each team member’s satisfaction.
- People who offer positive feedback and ratings are automatically redirected to your Glassdoor employer profile. Here they’re encouraged to leave a public employee online review.
- Staff members who are not happy and offer negative scores explain why directly in our survey platform – never being redirected to Glassdoor.
While our team encourages organizations to help privately resolve negative employee feedback, our system makes it less likely that dissatisfied team members will post something publicly.
And whoola! Adding plenty of 5-star ratings to your Glassdoor company profile from legitimate employees just got a whole lot easier.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Regular employee surveys offer a multitude of benefits for organizations. Not only is it a tool to improve job satisfaction and retention, but it can also help increase positive Glassdoor reviews for future job seekers to see.
Conduct Employee Surveys with Drive Research
Drive Research is a national market research company specializing in employee engagement surveys. Our team works with organizations of all sizes and sectors to deliver fresh employee insights.
We often encourage our clients to incorporate an element of online reputation management into these surveys to help improve their ratings on popular employee rating sites such as Glassdoor.
Ready to improve Glassdoor ratings? Learn more about our employee survey process by contacting our team today.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Emily Carroll
A SUNY Cortland graduate, Emily has taken her passion for social and content marketing to Drive Research as the Marketing Manager. She has earned certificates for both Google Analytics and Google AdWords.
Learn more about Emily, here.
