Can You Trace, Remove, and Improve Your Glassdoor Reviews? (Strategy Inside)
A burning question for the hiring managers / TA teams in most companies: can the Glassdoor reviews be deleted or improved? Especially if they are below 4.0 as it has a negative impact on their KPIs, hiring metrics and the business.
Imagine if it takes over 3 months to fill a product role. Social media and user generated content is a double-edged sword. While it can give your company an opportunity to showcase its brand and products from a new, authentic perspective, it can also be a risky proposition if consumers take umbrage with the information they read and upload.
In this article, we will go into the details of if it is possible to trace, remove or improve your Glassdoor reviews and the strategies for the same.
Table of Contents
Why Glassdoor Reviews Matter
A recent Glassdoor article boldly titled, “Millions of Employees Are Now Reading Your Company’s Reviews Every Day” explains that many job seekers now routinely read business reviews on sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Glassdoor as part of their research before applying for jobs or accepting offers. The article goes on to say that one in three candidates now screen potential employers based on the company’s reputation before they even respond to a job offer.
Possible impact of poor reviews:
- Increased time to hire
- Increased cost per hire
- Delays in filling up a position affect product and service deadlines thereby impacting business
- Bad PR affects the stock price
- Affects the brand reputation
- Increases marketing spend to salvage reputation
How to Write Creative Job Descriptions:
Can you trace anonymous Glassdoor reviews?
Glassdoor reveals that if someone asks them to tell them who wrote a review, they say no.
And if someone takes legal action to try and find out who wrote a review, they fight for that user’s First Amendment right to post opinions anonymously. You may read more about it here — How does Glassdoor respond to legal requests article. So far, courts have almost always ruled in favor of Glassdoor and its users when we’ve fought to protect anonymity.
Is it possible to remove the fake or negative Glassdoor reviews?
Negative reviews on Glassdoor can be a company’s worst nightmare. In fact, one study found that the presence of negative reviews on Glassdoor could lead to a 5.9% decrease in share prices for an S&P 500 company.
How can an employer delete / remove review from Glassdoor:
Yes, as an employer can ask for reviews to be deleted if you feel the review is false/ inappropriate. Follow the process outlined below by Glassdoor for flagging a review:
To report content from within the Employer Center:
- Go to the Employer Center.
- Click on the Reviews tile.
- On the review you wish to report, click the Flag icon below the content.
- If a text box is provided (limited to 1,500 characters or less), explain why you are reporting the review.
- Click Send.
How to delete your OWN reviews from Glassdoor:
Glassdoor’s stance on deleting reviews otherwise is clear. Employers cannot pay to remove reviews. This policy ensures transparency and objectivity of the platform. You can only edit or delete your OWN contribution within 30 days. The procedure for the same is listed below:
- Click on the Glassdoor Profile icon located at the top right corner of the site.
- Click Contributions in the drop-down menu. On the left-hand side of the page, click the type of contribution you wish to delete.
- Click Delete to delete your contribution. Allow up to 24 hours for your contribution to be removed completely from Glassdoor.
How to ensure negative reviews is not affecting your business
Respond to Reviews
First and foremost, if you see a negative review, respond to it. Responding to reviews will help minimize the impact, and keep employees at your company who are reading them from leaving. Many negative comments are anonymous which may make it difficult to trace the employee. Still respond to it.
Make sure to respond to the reviews that are most damaging to your company. For example, if the review mentions something like sexual harassment at your company, and you know the person who posted the review, you should respond to their specific review. You can also respond to reviews on a broader scale. If one review mentions something like a low pay, you can respond to all of them. For example, you could respond to one review by saying, “We pay our employees above the industry standard, and here is proof,” and then provide your employees with a link to the proof.
Legitimate Ways to Improve Your Glassdoor Rating
There are plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong at work. Disagreements between colleagues, unfulfilling tasks, and difficult customers are all common sources of stress that employees may face in the office. However, when these issues become so acute that they create a negative work environment, it’s time to do something about it.
1. Ask Employees to Review You on Glassdoor
If you have not posted reviews on Glassdoor but your company has been seeing negative reviews, you should ask your employees to review their experience at your company. In fact, you should ask them to do so in a company meeting, and let them know that their reviews can help the company. There have been several studies done on companies that have asked their employees to post reviews and have seen the impact that those reviews have had on their stock price.
For example, SlabHub and Redfin both pushed their employees to post reviews on Glassdoor. Therefore, you should not just ask your employees to post reviews, but let them know that you want them to post positive reviews.
2. Add a transparency section to your career site
If you have a career site, you can add a section to it where you let current and potential employees know that you have posted reviews on Glassdoor. You can also let them know what positive reviews you have received and how they can read them.
3. Add a Glassdoor badge to your job ads
If you are trying to hire new employees, you can add a Glassdoor badge to the job ads for the positions that you are hiring for. This can help improve your Glassdoor rating and make the job postings more attractive to job seekers. You can add the badge by going to glassdoor.com/badge. You can also add the badge to your company website. For example, if you have an “employee-friendly” product, you can use a badge on your website to let potential customers know that.
Closing Thoughts
Negative reviews on Glassdoor can have a devastating impact on a company’s business, stock price, reputation, and talent brand. However, there are several things that you can do to respond and improve to limit the negative consequences. Check your Glassdoor rating regularly, be proactive in taking remedial steps if they are genuine, work towards making it higher by improving your company culture and providing your employees with the resources that they need to succeed.
Work with a Talent Branding partner like HRBx to build your talent brand.
FAQs / TL;DR
Find answers to often asked questions below:
1. Can employers delete Glassdoor reviews?
Removing factually correct negative reviews is illegal / not permissible. In short, companies/ employers cannot delete negative reviews unless proved otherwise.
2. Can employers see your Glassdoor reviews?
No, if the review is posted anonymously. If an employer seeks to find out who wrote the anonymous review, they cannot do so. The right to privacy is maintained, as per Glassdoor.
3. How to respond to negative reviews on Glassdoor?
It's a good practice to respond to negative reviews on time. If the issue is factually correct and genuine, address it objectively with respect. Offer solutions and keep the communication line open to resolve it offline.
4. How to post an anonymous review on Glassdoor?
Choose the type of review you want to post, and leave the fields empty that are not mandatory. Depending on the type of review you want to post, certain fields are mandatory. If you want to post a review about the company, you can just mentioned the job function. For interview review type, job title is required.
5. How to edit review on Glassdoor?
Log into your Glassdoor profile, click on contributions, and choose the type. Edit your review within 30 days if the company has not responded
6. What sites are similar to Glassdoor?
AmbitionBox
7. Examples of good / positive glassdoor reviews
Here is an example of a positive review:
<<<
Current Employee, more than 1 year
One of the best company to work for, Google -> Meta -> Apple -> Intuit -> Microsoft
9 Dec 2022 - Software Engineer II in Bangalore
Recommend
CEO Approval
Business Outlook
Pros
1) Work life balance 2) Really cares for its employees 3) You can do so much beside work, so many communities are there within Intuit - I am part of Intuit Abilities Network, Intuit Pride Network, We Care Give Back that led me to win 2022 Annual Award - wohoo! 4) Promotes Internal Mobility 5) Everything is very very transparent and no politics 6) You get so many goodies and gifts throughout the year 7) Nature of work and technology has improved drastically in recent years, all cutting edge technologies are being used 8) diverse group of people
Cons
1) International mobility 2) There are too many events and activities are going on
Advice to Management
Saurabh - you are awesome! No complaints or advice - you are doing just perfect!
>>>
8. Examples of responses to negative Glassdoor reviews
Here is an example of a negative review followed by the company's response:
Former Employee, less than 1 year
Unethical Place to Work
23 Jan 2022 - Senior Data Engineer in Bangalore
Recommend
CEO Approval
Business Outlook
Pros
- Freebies from time to time
- Employee stock purchase plan although I never availed it.
Cons
- Poor leadership and middle management.
- Will overwork you and exploit you in the name of on-call, outdated technology and practices, and hence will get more work done from you than you would be paid for, without even recognition. Middle management without any knowledge or contribution would take the credit for all.
- Bullying culture towards contractors, departing employees and even new joiners. The company seems to have a bias against men in their DNA and that's openly prevalent in their practices like CSR initiatives like sponsoring education only for girls. Not to say that the gender ratio in teams is any better but you won't feel valued in your position for sure.
- They have an internal portal for mandatory courses which to me seemed more like a mind programming mechanism to brainwash employees in their own culture and malpractices in the name of culture, ethics, etc.. I have worked at many other places and none does it to the extent *** does - no surprise why they even have a training on how to protect yourself from shooters on campus, which I presume could be a commonplace occurrence given how bad they are.
- This is one of the most rotten organisation to the core. Please avoid at all costs and all their rankings are a big lie and open deception.
Company Response
Ethics and Investigations
Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. We recognize and appreciate that it takes courage to speak up and we want you to know that we take these matters very seriously.
Our top priority is to ensure that ** maintains a safe and inclusive work environment. We do not tolerate any behavior that is not aligned with our commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion and fostering a work environment where *s employees can do the best work of their lives. Our leaders in India are fully committed to these principles and *'s values.
Please feel free to share any more information about your experiences at ** by reaching out to me at **.com. I can also schedule time with you if you would like to give additional feedback.
9. Can you pay to remove negative Glassdoor reviews?
No, that's illegal.