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Glassdoor Review Removal
Last fall, Inc. released a study showing that more than half of all potential job candidates wouldn’t apply at a company with bad reviews online. This highlights an important business aspect that most HR teams aren’t typically thinking of.
Just as word of mouth about your business can affect whether or not vendors or clients want to work with you, a bad review online about your company culture can ensure that you’ll never attract the top talent you’re after.
However, sometimes it’s not always your fault. People leave fake Glassdoor reviews all the time or simply post a negative review after not receiving a job they thought they’d for sure snagged. If that’s the case, you can have the reviews removed.
It’s not that hard, actually. Follow along as we teach your hot to get Glassdoor reviews removed to improve your company’s reputation.
What to Know About Fake Glassdoor Reviews
As an HR executive or CEO, it’s likely that you’re aware of who you’ve interviewed and when. So, you have a pretty good idea of who is interacting with your company.
Most reviewers will put the date they met with a recruiter and the position they interviewed for when reviewing a company’s interview process. If you see something that’s off, it might be fake.
As well, you know who your employees are and have a pretty good idea of when they worked, what they did, and even possibly their tone of voice. If you see reviews that don’t quite add up or seem off in some way, it’s best to contact Glassdoor to have the review removed or at least verified.
How does Glassdoor verify reviews? It’s difficult as the nature of the reviews is the anonymity they permit employees in knowing that they won’t jeopardize their job position or career future. Currently, it’s all in their Terms of Use.
When signing up for the platform, all users are required to certify that what they’re posting is accurate. On top of that, Glassdoor operates under community moderation terms, meaning that they’ll work to identify suspicious posts from both employers and employees.
However, depending on your HR strategy, there are other ways to learn how to manage Glassdoor reviews. Before requesting that they’re removed think about responding to them to show off your professional company culture.
Or, you can counteract one bad review with five great reviews from real employees who have truly positive things to say about the company. If you think about the fact that 92% of professionals would consider changing jobs if offered a job with a business that has an excellent corporate reputation, positive reviews are quite possibly even more powerful than negative ones.
How to Remove Negative, False or Fake Glassdoor Reviews
Flag the review for removal
If you’re concerned that someone has left a fake Glassdoor removed then you’ll have to contact the website directly to get it removed. The first order of business is to flag the review. This also goes for flagging any other inappropriate content on your Glassdoor company page.
Once you’ve flagged it, you’ll be able to explain why you’re reporting the content. If it’s a review that you think is fake, take the space to truly explain in detail why you think it’s fake and that you wish to have it removed.
Glassdoor Terms Violations
Within 48 hours, the Glassdoor team will review your report and get back to you. Sometimes, they might remove the review whether it’s fake or not simply due to the fact that it might violate some of their terms of use, such as:
- Mentioning employees by their first name.
- Posting more than one review per company worked at per year.
- Reviews that include inappropriate terms, racism, sexism, and related issues.
It’s important to note that Glassdoor won’t ever remove a review solely because it’s negative and you don’t like it. They also won’t ever remove a company from Glassdoor once reviews are there or someone has claimed the page.
As mentioned above, sometimes the best remedy to one poor review is to kindly ask your other employees to leave positive, honest reviews.
Glassdoor notes that based on their job-seeking data, they understand that most potential candidates will read a number of reviews for one company and discount the outliers if there are one or two negative reviews.
If this is the case for you and your company has bad reviews on Glassdoor but only a small handful, perhaps it’s wiser to instead focus on how to get better Glassdoor reviews.
When and How to Respond to Negative Glassdoor Reviews
If Glassdoor won’t remove the review because they deem it’s not fake then you should develop a plan for how to handle bad Glassdoor reviews now and in the future. First, think about whether you’re going to respond or not.
Then, assign the responsibility of responding to one person on your team. Usually, the head of your HR department will respond, but if the review speaks on one person specifically, such as the Head of Marketing or the CEO, it might be worth letting them respond in a professional manner.
Investigate the claim and the negative statements they make in their review.
Honesty is the best policy, with employees both current and potential truly appreciating transparency in corporate teams.
This means that if something was an issue in the past but has since been rectified, mention it. If the review mentions a horrible interview process due to an outdated job hiring platform, be sure to mention that you’ve since updated the process while kindly thanking them for their input.
How to Get More Positive Reviews on Glassdoor
If you’re still interested in learning how to encourage employees to leave Glassdoor reviews, here are a few ways to improve your company reviews and reputation on Glassdoor.
Help Employees Set Up a Free Glassdoor Account
One of the biggest reasons why employees aren’t learning reviews on Glassdoor is because they don’t know how to. At the next team-building or career-building event with the company, carve out some time to help them set up a free Glassdoor account.
It’s actually pretty easy to do and only takes a few seconds. But, as part of the exercise, you can also take some time to show them the other functions associated with the platform. While they currently have a job, it’s a great way to show them you care about their career.
Then, encourage them to leave reviews of the company. However, offer to let them speak with their department head or an HR professional before leaving the review. This encourages them to speak their minds about any issues that you might be able to clear up or resolve.
Provide Incentives for Leaving a Review on Glassdoor
You should never, ever pay for reviews of your company. It’s unethical. However, you can offer incentives to employees who remember to leave a review in general, whether it’s good or bad.
Stress that their reviews can remain anonymous and that you’re not incentivizing in order to receive good reviews. Rather, you’re just trying to increase your presence on the platform while also gaining an honest picture of the company culture at the moment.
A proper incentive might be that each employee who leaves a review can be entered into a company-wide raffle. Or, a special Friday afternoon off for those who leave reviews within a certain timeframe.
Solve Issues in Bad Glassdoor Reviews
Want to know how to avoid bad Glassdoor reviews? Address the issues that people mention in them!
If you see a slew of two or three reviews one after another that all mention something negative about company policy, take a hard look at the company policy. Likewise, if reviews mention how horrible it was to work with a department head, meet with that person directly.
The only way to ensure that you don’t continue to receive the same negative reviews is to address the issues within them and work to improve upon the positive comments in them as well. This is why it’s important to ask all employees for reviews, whether good or bad.
Think About Reputation Management Services
Glassdoor is only one platform where various employees, job candidates, and sometimes, yes, even fake people can leave comments and reviews about your company. Seeing as a business’s online reputation is so important, you’ll need to stay on top of it all.
Not working to optimize your company reputation can lead to many things, including a loss of revenue, lawsuits, the inability to attract top talent, and a negative overall public image. It’s important to manage these factors, but who has time for that?
Instead, leave all of the hard work to reputation managers whose sole job is to search for, identify, and remedy all risks related to your company’s reputation. They know how to get Glassdoor reviews removed, but it goes so much further than that.
Click here to talk to one of Defamation Defenders' online reputation repair experts today.