How to leverage Glassdoor reviews (and more) to improve your employer brand
Employee feedback is one of the most valuable tools you can use to build a strong employer brand. Through avenues such as online reviews, Fishbowl conversations, and internal surveys, you can tap into employee voice and guide your employer branding efforts from an informed perspective. Employee voice represents the authentic employee experience- it's what people really think and feel about working at your company.
Here are four examples of how companies use reviews to continually shape the employee experience.
- Use Glassdoor reviews to validate internal surveys.
Southwest Airlines (#86 on Glassdoor's Best Places to Work 2023 list) continues to work on ways to improve upon the employee experience, despite recent bouts with flight cancellations and customer service complaints. The company has used Glassdoor review data to validate anonymous, internal survey results. "If someone (writes) a Glassdoor review, they're doing that of their own volition," said Kelby Tansey, manager of recruitment marketing at Southwest Airlines. "So that's a great way for us to validate and direct some of our employee experience and employer brand content." Tansey indicates that it's an additional benefit to see different scores on Glassdoor for aspects such as benefits and work/life balance, which help guide their self-assessment.
McDonald's Corporation uses Glassdoor reviews similarly. "We were able to use Glassdoor to validate a lot of what we were hearing through our surveys," said Kieran Layton, Field People Officer at McDonald's. "We (have been) able to use Glassdoor to benchmark as we went along our journey. If we saw something come up on Glassdoor that we hadn't seen before we could say hey, is this something we need to look into deeper?"
Read more: How to read company reviews on Glassdoor
- Read and respond to Glassdoor reviews.
Tansey said Southwest monitors its Glassdoor reviews and that the company is very intentional about which reviews its team responds to, how, and why. "We want our responses to be heartfelt," said Tansey. With feedback from reviews and surveys, Southwest creates an action plan for all departments based on identified strengths and weaknesses. "I think that's key," said Tansey.
"If you're only asking for feedback but not showing accountability on progress, you'll get a lower response rate. As a candidate is scrolling, if you have that heartfelt response, that's what they care about."
- Kelby Tansey, Southwest Airlines
- Leverage Review Intelligence™.
"Measuring employer brand when you have a company as big as McDonald's is really difficult," said Layton. "If you're looking to start your employer brand measurement work, Review Intelligence™ can be a great place to start."
Review Intelligence is a tool that helps you understand, filter, and manage your data on Glassdoor. With it, you can better shape the employee experience.
McDonald's sees monitoring employee voice through a tool like Review Intelligence™ as a key part of their employer brand. "If you're not starting with the voice of your employees, you're not starting on the right foot … no matter where you are in your employer brand journey. We subscribe to (Review Intelligence™) specifically for employee value proposition work - not just at the outset of our journey, but as we started measuring. This helped establish a baseline of what we would be tracking against," said Layton.
VCA Animal Hospitals also uses Review Intelligence™ to see if the company is making progress on diversity or mental health and wellbeing initiatives. "I saw that our diversity score went up in Glassdoor, which was great feedback. It also shows us where there is work (yet) to be done," said Ally Brown, VCA Brand manager for employer brand and recruiting.
"The more you can use the voice of your (employees) the more transparent you will be."
- Ally Brown, VCA Brand manager for employer brand and recruiting
- Adjust your recruitment strategy.
Glassdoor helps job seekers peek inside and see what it's like to work at a company. This is one of the benefits of employer branding - showcasing your company to potential employees. "Glassdoor is one of our big partners when it comes to recruitment marketing," said Layton. "Glassdoor's 'Employee Sentiment' was part of our "voice of the employee" research.
To learn more about how vital employee voice is to your employer branding efforts, and how to improve the employee experience, download our Employer Branding report today.
