Crisis management is a big part of what we do at RoseComm. A few weeks ago, one of our clients contacted us after they discovered a negative review from a former employee on Glassdoor, a site that gives an “inside look at jobs and companies.” Frankly, I hadn’t heard of Glassdoor, so after I spent a few minutes on the site, I asked my colleagues (of varying ages) if they were familiar with it. Most had heard of it, but no one had any firsthand experience.
One negative review on any page doesn’t usually warrant a response, as most people understand the need to take it with a proverbial grain of salt. But recruitment is an important objective for our client and there were no positive reviews to counter this one person’s bad experience. Plus it was full of inaccuracies — such as an assertion that the leadership team was not college educated and the company was in financial trouble. We tried to get Glassdoor to remove the factual inaccuracies because that seems an obvious breach of their code of conduct. Without providing a specific response, they said they reviewed the remarks a second time and decided to leave it as is. So we recommended the next best option: Write a response from the CEO.
Glassdoor may be a relatively young company, but it seems to be gaining momentum, including a partnership with Facebook that allows people to search their friends to see if anyone has experience with an employer in which they are interested. Tommy Hilfiger’s cautionary tale of how an online rumor can spin out of control always comes to mind when a client of ours is faced with a situation such as this one. We need to build out the company’s profile on the page and ask employees to balance out the negative review by sharing their perspectives. But, in the short term, I believe we did the right thing.
As an employer, some aspects of Glassdoor trouble me. I’m all about transparency and the democratization of information to level the playing field. But I also believe in the power of a meritocracy, particularly in an entrepreneurial setting. A site that encourages people to share information about their salary packages and what questions they were asked during the interview has the potential to lessen competitive advantage for both employer and the employee. The bottom line: If you haven’t looked up your company on Glassdoor, you should.