Every company loves getting positive feedback that sings praises of all their services and features. What is difficult to digest are negative reviews which is often the case with the feedback provided by former employees. These might be unwarranted or perfectly true, but they greatly impact the company’s reputation.
Handling your employee brand is something only the most skilled and experienced can accomplish. Managing negativity in former employee reviews is also crucial to reduce the effects of negative online chatter about the company.
In this article, we will discuss the different strategies that can be employed to curb the effects of disgruntled employees leaving bad reviews about the company.
Negative reviews by former employees of a company usually target the following factors:
While such feedback might simply seem like certain disgruntled employees making false claims, you have to find out further the reasons for such negative reviews. These reviews are often consequences of the employee not being treated in a certain way or not achieving something the employee had planned to.
Such disgruntled employees leaving bad reviews usually aim to turn off customers from the company, warn prospective employees of the cons of joining, or tarnish the company’s reputation. So how can you tackle such problems?
One of the primary strategies of dealing with former employee negative reviews is to have a response policy in place and follow it in the wake of such a situation. Such a policy is usually either a part of the brand managing scheme or a part of policies governing social media use.
Your company must have a dedicated team for this so that no rash or sudden action is taken when negative feedback comes in. This team or person will clarify whether the response should be in the company’s name to make it look more official or in the name of the respondent addressed by the review.
The response policy should also be in place to ensure that there is always a response no matter how grave the allegations are. Doing otherwise might mean that your company accepts the claims made by the former employee. The team will also establish certain standards of professionalism in each response. This concerns the use of language, specific words, formatting of the response, etc.
Lastly, there must also be a standard timeframe for the response to be made public.
No matter how legitimate the claims of the former employee might be, they aim to destroy your company’s reputation. Therefore, you need to be on the lookout for the sites they target for giving negative feedback. While there are specific conventional platforms for review writing, other social media pages like Facebook and Linkedin have become increasingly popular for disgruntled employees leaving bad reviews.
Keeping an eye on these various web pages can help you develop strategies for dealing with the situation. It keeps you in the loop.
You cannot simply turn a blind eye to the reviews and claim all of them to be false. Often these negative reviews might turn out to be constructive criticism that can be used to improve aspects of the company. For example, suppose a former employee mentions things like a wage gap between male and female employees or the need for gender sensitization. In that case, you must investigate these and provide lucrative solutions.
Have someone neutral investigate the issues so that decisions are not biased. This factor is crucial for cases of harassment and discrimination. Negative feedback does not necessarily have to mean a disgruntled employee making false claims.
There are many more strategies that you can research and come up with to deal with bad reviews by former employees. It is a murky situation with several dos and don’ts attached to it that you must be aware of for the successful brand management of your business. The secret to the success of any company is not celebrating all the glowing reviews but standing up to the challenges of negative reviews.