Are Most Employee Reviews of Their Employers Overrated?

We have bad reviews. What if I told you that was a good thing?

In any business, reputation is everything. That’s why authentic positive reviews are fast becoming a primary Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for organizations large and small, from financial services and sporting goods to software as a service and home decor.

Very few businesses escape what many owners and investors believe is the curse of word-of-mouth marketing — negative reviews.

Yes, a single negative review can result in upwards of 30 lost customers, according to a 2009 Convergys Corp. study. But as my statement at the beginning of this article implies, there is more to a bad review than an accompanying 1-star or 2-star rating. For business owners across Europe, Asia, North America and beyond, that is a very good thing.

Have you ever heard of the Negative Review Paradox?

It’s as simple as this:

Bad reviews hurt business, but having no bad reviews is worse.

How can this be?

According to The Guardian, “[T]here is a growing body of opinion that says bad reviews are actually beneficial for building integrity and credibility.”

A 2013 study the newspaper reported on found that 68% of consumers trust a business’ reviews more when both positive and negative reviews are present. Furthermore, when a company only has positive reviews to show, 95% of consumers believe the reviews are fake or that negative reviews were censored.

In this way, bad reviews can be a value add because they enhance the believability of the positive reviews you’ve received and add authenticity to your online presence overall. Thank those 1-star and 2-star reviews for improved e-commerce conversion rates as well.

The same 2013 study found that 5 times as many consumers scan the internet for negative reviews than for positive reviews, which results in these consumers viewing 5 times as many pages on a website.

After analyzing 143 million website sessions and €441 million in online revenue, Wolfgang Digital’s 2017 E-Commerce Benchmark KPI Study found that increasing the time a user spends on a website by a mere 16% increases conversion rates by 10%.

In fact, this correlation between time spent on site and e-commerce conversion rate was the strongest in the entire study — 0.6 correlation. Not surprisingly, pages viewed per session correlated with revenue increase — 0.25 correlation.

I’ll say it again:

What if I told you bad reviews were a good thing?

There’s only one catch…

Since 2008, my company eKomi has reviewed and authenticated more than 50 million online reviews for over 14,000 different companies. We’ve determined that the often-unexpected benefits of negative reviews, such as increased credibility, authority and believability, only apply to verified reviews.

If a review isn’t verified by a reputable third party vendor, consumers doubt its authenticity for good reason. The fact is, not all bad (or good) reviews are created equal.

To demonstrate this, let me tell you a story…

A Tale of Two Reviews

Elsa wants to write a review. After transacting with the company, her identity and relationship to the company are immediately verified by a third party platform. Elsa clicks a secure review link accessible only to verified users. She writes about her experience, selects a rating 1–5 and submits the review. The third party platform’s feedback management team validates Esla’s review as authentic, after which the review is published online under her full name and broadcast across the web.

Then there’s Hans; Hans wants to write a review, too. Hans creates an account on an anonymous review forum. He is not prompted to enter any personal information or confirm his relationship to the companies he reviews. Under an anonymous name and without third party verification he isn’t a bot, Hans writes about his experience with the company, selects a rating 1–5 and submits the review.

His review is immediately published for the entire world to see. By that point, Hans hasn’t even confirmed his email address.

Now, let me ask you a question:

Regardless of the reviews’ content and the review ratings, which reviewer do you trust more? Elsa or Hans?

If you were to rate the quality and credibility of each reviewer, you would probably give Elsa a 5-star rating and Hans a 1-star rating.

With this nuanced perspective on the two types of reviewers in mind, we can safely conclude that the best reviews — read: most trustworthy — a business can receive are not actually 5-star reviews, they are authentic reviews.

Every day at eKomi, I see the hypothetical stories of Elsa and Hans play out in real life in real time. Consumers read and re-read every word of verified, authentic reviews (like Elsa’s) but skim unverified, potentially inauthentic reviews (like Hans’) for half a second before closing the browser tab.

Since the dawn of e-commerce 24 years ago, consumers have trained themselves to approach random online reviews with an increasing amount of skepticism. According to research on consumer behavior by GetApp, 5-star ratings alone do not influence purchasing decisions if lower ratings are not present because of consumers’ “too good to be true” rationale.

Writing for TechCrunch, Tom Collinger, the Executive Director of Medill Integrated Marketing Communications Spiegel Digital and Database Research Center, expanded on GetApp’s findings.

“Having a few less-than-perfect reviews decreases a [company’s] average star rating, but grows the business more.”

The Gold Standard of Feedback

In 2015, Forbes published the transcript of my interview with them. The article’s title — “This Is The Much-Needed New Gold Standard For Reviews.” — is a nod to authentic, verified, transaction-based reviews that consumers trust.

Of course, these reviews only count if no begging or bribing was involved. Because of the allure 5-star reviews offer, some business owners resort to both sleazy tactics.

In an exposé of dirty reputation management schemes, Forbes also published the account of a dejected employee whose direct report had threatened consequences if she refused topublish fake positive reviews!

“My awful manager, Gloria, found Glassdoor and commanded each of us to write a positive review about the company…I don’t think it will work, but I’m going to leave the positive review the way my manager told me to because I need this job…”

Repulsive. Don’t be like Gloria, or your business will one day pay a heavy price like Lifestyle Lift, Aveling Homes, New York SEO companies, and Fiverr reviewers have. The fines are bad enough, but you cannot put a price on the reputational damage.

While thousands of organizations have adopted solutions like eKomi to implement the “Gold Standard” of reputation management — verifying and authenticating customer reviews — many have been slow to implement a solution for another type of potentially credibility-damaging review:

Employee reviews.

The Challenge of Anonymous, Unverified (Potentially Inauthentic) Employee Reviews

So, what’s the big difference between a customer review on Google and an employee review on Glassdoor?

First of all, if verification and authentication are the twofold Gold Standard of reviews, be skeptical of anything that doesn’t provide both.

In Elsa’s story, her customer review included a name, proof of relationship (the transaction) and multiple layers of security. This keeps Elsa and the company accountable to one another; Elsa “stands behind” what she says, and the company has the opportunity to respond directly and publicly.

However, Hans’ story is more like an anonymous employee review on Glassdoor. It’s easy to exaggerate the facts to the point they become outright lies because accountability plays no role. Reviewers can hide behind meaningless usernames, refusing to publicly associate themselves with their claims.

However, to be fair to both parties — employees and their employers — anonymity can be a good thing.

Anonymous Employee Reviews: A Double-Edged Sword

If an employer breaks the law or treats an employee in an unethical way, justice must be served — and the public deserves to know about it.

Anonymous reviews shield wronged employees from corporate retaliation. Where abuse is systemic, whistleblowers deserve protection.

And they’re getting it. For example, the October 2017 European Parliament resolution on whistleblower protections, the United Kingdom’s 1996 Employment Rights Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 in the United States protect the rights of employees who wish to (privately) come forward to the authorities and report ethics violations within their organizations.

Such laws are necessary because some companies commit to upholding high standards of behavior in theory — not in practice. Stories of discrimination and corruption are littered across our newsfeeds, from the 215 unreported harassment claims at Uber that triggered mass firings to multiple European corporations’ violations of basic human rights.

Human Resources departments exist for a reason. If these scandals are the final step in a deteriorating company-employee relationship, the first step in improving employee experience is to listen to their concerns without judgment.

At eKomi, we maintain a culture of trust in which the average employee feels comfortable with two-way feedback. That’s why I am so saddened by the opposite site of this double-edged sword:

Anonymity protects the innocent, but it also protects the guilty.

As Hans’ story illustrates, anyone can write a review under the guise of being an employee. If a competitor or industry rival wants to engage in corporate sabotage, publishing an anonymous review on Glassdoor, Comparably or other employer review sites, they can.

In reputation management, fraud is not particularly difficult.

Furthermore, there are no barriers or regulations stopping disgruntled employees from revealing company secrets in an anonymous review, calling out executives by name, thereby breaching EU privacy regulations and exposing companies to liabilities based upon new General Data Protection Regulation enforcement.

It almost goes without saying — these anonymous, unverified and potentially inauthentic negative employee reviews hurt business.

In a 2015 Yelp forum post, business owners commiserated with one another over their inability to respond to negative employee reviews that are “fake,” “smack talking,” and even “bold faced lying.” One reply on the thread is the digital equivalent of waving a white flag of surrender.

“Comments must be proven to be malicious, baseless and not just the writer’s opinion before legal action can be used.”

Because national and international laws favor employees over employers, it is highly unlikely that “proof” can be offered to trigger legal consequences for the anonymous reviewer. Only recently, Google banned ex-employees of businesses listed on Google My Business from reviewing their employer. Is this too little too late, or the spark of a new trend? Only time will tell.

Despite the negative contents of potentially fraudulent employee reviews, none of this covers the worst aspect of employee reviews sites — they are not “transaction-based.”

In other words, third party verification is not required to prove that the reviewer did, in fact, hold the role at the company or for the duration claimed.

Contrast that with the average taxi app review process. Both players are on equal terms — driver and passenger. After the ride, the taxi driver can publicly rate and review their passenger and vice-versa. Each side has a voice.

Just imagine the abuse if this was done anonymously! That is exactly what can happen with employee reviews.

Is an employee rightfully calling out your organization for ethical failings, or are you the victim of corporate sabotage?

There is no way to know on reputation management platforms that don’t adhere to the Gold Standard.

Even though we at eKomi do our best to treat employees well, compensate everyone fairly and reward each team for a job well done, we have still received bad reviews — hence, the title of this article.

As an entrepreneur, I see myself as not just obtaining customers and building wealth for shareholders, but creating careers for my employees as well. So when I do read the 1-star and 2-star reviews, I am left with more questions than answers. Are competitors motivated to sabotage eKomi’s online reputation out of jealousy? We are the largest feedback company with the most reviews authenticated of anyone in our industry, so that is a possibility.

Then again, if our negative employee reviews are legitimate, why won’t the disgruntled employees state their complaints to us face to face? Because our employees are our greatest asset, we have every motivation to make things right. We are all human, after all, and we all go to work together as a team.

There is a tendency for (alleged) disgruntled employees to post multiple negative reviews, so they ultimately gain nothing for the reviewers. Here’s why:

According to Dr. Kohei Kawamura, economics lecturer at Edinburgh University, extremely negative reviews cannot be trusted. Polarized reviews are subject to exaggeration and, as a result, “less credible.” We should, therefore, “discount” such reviews.

No matter how tempting it may be, never, ever “fight fire with fire.” At eKomi, we refuse to scrub negative reviews, force employees to write positive ones or sabotage competitors. Anonymity is an advantage for unethical reviewers, but do not sacrifice your integrity to combat it.

Authenticity is our top priority at eKomi, even if that authenticity is not particularly flattering.

The Solution: Authentic, Verified, Anonymous Employee Reviews in Real-Time

Despite the double-edged sword of employee reviews that can slice clean through a company’s reputation, you are not without a shield; there are solutions in the marketplace to solve the anonymous, unverified and potentially inauthentic employee review problem.

I always recommend that fellow entrepreneurs choose a solution that empowers Human Resources and People Operations to:

• generate more positive reviews without begging, bribing or buying them
• authenticate and verify every employee review
• address problems as they arise
• protect the company’s and the employees’ reputations
• allow employees the option of anonymity

As you can probably tell, these solutions are third party built but internally controlled. This offers companies more leverage to address complaints and keep employees satisfied while building employees’ trust in the process itself.

Recently, employee review solutions that are not third party sourced have received negative press. For instance, Forbes shared one employees’ disastrous experience with a “DIY” employee feedback solution. Entitled, “I Should Never Have Responded To The ‘Confidential’ Employee Survey,” the article went viral, amassing almost 250,000 views in less than a week.

The employee answered the so-called “confidential” survey as honestly as he could, but his responses stirred up drama with his supervisor that he never expected.

Save your organization the trouble. Choose a third party solution that legitimately guarantees anonymity without discouraging employees to write reviews in the first place.

In fact, a proactive third party approach to employee surveying solves one of the biggest problems of authentic reviews — getting them!

Most people write reviews only about polarized experiences, not neutral ones. For example, if you eat at a restaurant and leave with only a full stomach, you are not as likely to write a review. But if you happened to meet the love of your life there or spend 3 hours in the toilet with food poisoning, you cannot write a review fast enough!

Authentic review sourcing and survey management platforms like eKomi’s Voice of Employees (VOE) solution relies on what I call the “Virtuous Feedback Cycle”:

Consistent feedback requests drive higher employee engagement, resulting in happier employees and therefore better reviews. These positive reviews motivate even higher employee engagement, resulting in even happier employees and even more positive reviews.

The Virtuous Feedback Cycle operates within the user-friendly VOE platform, which collects and reports employee feedback in real time, integrates with Slack for easier, quicker surveys and feels natural within cultures that value two-way conversations over rigid top-down leadership.

Regardless of top-down or bottom-up cultures, this approach works because it’s built on authenticity and trust. Contrast the Virtuous Feedback Cycle with other third party solutions. Review sites like Glassdoor sacrifice authenticity for anonymity. With providers like eKomi, you can have both.

And in organizations that implement traditional management consultants’ quarterly surveys, there is always the risk of inaccurate response data.

For example, by the time a 1st Quarter survey is sent, responses are received and reports are generated, so much time may have passed that the 3rd Quarter rolls around before reports are reviewed by company leadership!

In that case, the surveys are not statistically significant due to employee turnover or other personnel and department changes.

In Conclusion: Are Most Employee Reviews of Their Employers Overrated? YES!

More specifically, anonymous, unverified, potentially inauthentic employee reviews are overrated.

Without a third party authentic review sourcing and survey management platform, companies risk being the victim of corporate sabotage. And when a negative review is legitimate, the disgruntled employee’s review distracts the team and puts undue stress on management to handle the issue, which could have easily been resolved through private two-way feedback.

Fortunately, the same Gold Standard for customer reviews is now available to Human Resources and People Operations. In 2018 and beyond, there is no excuse for unethically (and illegally) soliciting positive employee reviews.

With eKomi’s Voice of Employees and other third party solutions, employers have an ethical (and legal) way to get more positive employee reviews, and more often.

Questions?

I’m here to help navigate the murky waters of reputation management and employee feedback. Your reputation and credibility do not have to capsize. eKomi solved the authenticity problem for product and merchant reviews, and we’re now doing the same for employee reviews.

If you have any questions, comment below or send me a message.