Reputation management is an ongoing task that is never done. But what you probably didn’t expect is that a former employee can pose a huge risk to your online reputation if you’re not careful.
Make sure you’re monitoring the right channels and taking the right steps to protect your online reputation.
The Importance of Managing Employee Comments/Reviews Online
Even though you do everything you can to hire the best people, encourage them, and guide them to success, sometimes they still leave your business unhappy. And they will try to do everything to get back at you, including posting reviews and negative comments about you online once they are no longer working for you.
And despite having outstanding products and services, as well as customer service, all the work you’ve put into your online reputation can take a huge hit in just a few seconds.
Comments from disgruntled former employees can have two major impacts on your business:
- Changing Customer Perceptions of Your Organization
- Keeping top talent from applying for jobs at your company
Where to look for negative comments and employee reviews
Before you can take the proper steps to mitigate the damage that an angry former employee may cause by sharing their negative thoughts online, you need to know where to look. Here are a few places where a former employee might share their opinions.
- LinkedIn, including negative reviews for managers and other employees
- Glass door
- Social networks, including Facebook and Twitter
- Industry Review Websites
The reviews may be about their experience working for you or they may be written to sound like they were a customer of your company. They may post under a different name to disguise who they really are. But you can tell if the posts are real by how they are written.
What to do to protect your reputation online
When a former employee starts an online reputation-damaging campaign, you need to do everything you can to stop the reviews as quickly as possible before potential customers see them and it impacts your business. Here are some steps you should take.
1. Keep calm
It’s a pretty frustrating situation. But the job function email list last thing you want to do is get angry and respond the same way your disgruntled ex-employee did. If your responses show a lack of self-control, it will tell your potential clients something about you. And that could make the situation much worse.
So before you go online and start reading what the employee said about you, take a few deep breaths, take a walk, or relax in any way you can. Don’t rush or react impulsively.
2. Avoid negative feedback from employees
The best thing you can do is prevent a problem before it happens. Ideally, no employee should leave your company feeling like they were treated unfairly. It all starts with hiring the right people, training them thoroughly, and being incredibly clear about their job descriptions. And while you’re explaining their role, tell them what will happen if they fail to perform their job descriptions correctly, which sets the right expectations.
Conduct regular employee evaluations and help struggling team members succeed with success plans if they don’t meet their goals or benchmarks. china business directory That way, if they still don’t succeed, it won’t be a big surprise when they lose their job.
Firing an employee without notice is a way to provoke anger that could send them into an online tirade. The more sensitive you are about severance with an employee, the less likely you are to encounter negative online reactions.
3. Mark reviews for deletion
Most online review sites offer a way for companies to identify inaccurate or inaccurate reviews from previous customers. Flag employee posts for removal by marking them as inappropriate or notifying the platform of problems with the review.
However, you should also be aware that you can’t flag all negative reviews. This will tell the platform that you simply don’t take feedback well.
When stating the reasons why a review improve user experience (ux) to enhance visitor retention should be removed, be sure to list the site’s rules and how the review violates those rules. This will give you the best chance of success in getting it removed.