Turning a Negative Into a Positive

If there’s one thing you can count on LinkNow Media for, it’s our going on and on about how important reviews are to your business. When you’re trying to establish a digital footprint, nothing helps more than positive reviews from your customers, vouching that you did the job right and on time. In fact, even negative reviews are useful [EVE: LINK], and responding to them gives you an opportunity to reach out to right wrongs and to appear gracious in the eyes of potential clients.

So it’s only natural that this principle can extend to the reviews of your business on Glassdoor. Not sure what Glassdoor is? Well, it’s a site where employees can submit reviews about your company’s culture and hiring practices. It was designed as a space where job hunters could learn about prospective employers’ before signing onto a team.

Unfortunately, like so many things on the Internet, the effect wasn’t quite as its designers intended. Happy employees are too busy being happy at your workplace to spontaneously seek out Glassdoor and review your workplace culture. The most likely people to find and review you on the site? Disgruntled ex-employees with an axe to grind and a desire to make your business look bad in the public eye.

Improving Company Culture

As small business owners ourselves, management at our business is always looking for a way to improve the team experience at LinkNow Media. Glassdoor reviews, just like negative reviews on Google My Business, can seem scary at first, especially for new businesses. But when faced with negative Glassdoor reviews, LinkNow Media has some top tips for you: reach out to the ex-employee who posted the negative review and share your side of the story.

Act with compassion and you’ll show prospective employees you care about your employees, even if things didn’t work out as planned.

And, with a little humility, you can even learn something. Sure, you know everything about the finances and future of your business, but is it possible that there might be a grain of truth to the ex-employees gripes? There’s probably a lot of exaggeration in the Glassdoor review too, but maybe there’s an opportunity for you as a promoter of your company’s workplace culture [EVE: LINK TO SERIES ON COMPANY CULTURE].

What to Learn From Negative Glassdoor Reviews

If you’re the entrepreneurial sort, well, so are we. That’s why we started LinkNow Media. Glassdoor reviews that are negative, unflattering, or just plain untruthful? That’s a bitter pill to swallow. But if there’s any advice to take to heart, it’s the phrase: “You can’t please everyone all of the time. But you can please someone some of the time.”

Improving workplace and company culture is an admirable goal, and it’s one your employees will thank you for. But the super awesome team-building games you planned for next Monday will thrill the extroverts on your team and send shivers of dread through the spines of the workplace introverts. Just goes to show that company culture is often just a matter of perspective.