Don’t leave it unchecked, take control of your employer brand now

In a world ignited by employee voice, leaving online reviews unchecked can create a negative impact on your brand identity, Suyue Zhou, General Manager, Maximum Shanghai, affirms.

Picture a crucial meeting where a colleague shares a game-changing idea for a company problem. He spills his heart into the proposal but instead of sparking interest, his idea lands with a thud.

The room seems strangely unimpressed, and it's not just a little oversight. It hints at a bigger issue—maybe reluctance to embrace change or a blind spot in realising your colleague’s potential. Well, this can’t happen anymore.

Your colleague’s voice, a.k.a employee voice, is now three times more credible than CEO voice. And since 50% of job seekers read between five to 10 reviews about a prospective employer before forming an opinion about a company, you need to influence the voices that shape your employer brand.

Researching companies before applying for jobs is a common practice. Online reviews significantly impact job searches, with a strong employer brand increasing qualified applicants by 50%.

Employers should also understand what employees search on various platforms, including brand, benefits, reviews, and culture. More than 86% of women and 67% of men in the U.S. wouldn't join a company with a bad reputation, focusing on the critical role of reviews in shaping your employer brand.

Unchecked reviews can create a negative impact on your brand identity. Glassdoor studies have shown that almost 30% of job seekers have left a job within the first 90 days of starting (indicating misalignment between the candidate and the employer brand).

Therefore, ensuring what a company presents to job seekers accurately matches the actual employee experience is crucial. Before starting with the best practices to manage your employer brand, let’s look at some important stats to understand employee perception and brand value.

The power of consistency in employer branding
An agency actively shapes employee value propositions and influences candidate decisions. That’s why it’s essential to keep everyone truthful when it comes to what we're selling to job seekers. And that can be achieved by ensuring alignment between the brand story and employee experience to avoid a broken brand promise.

Job seekers heavily rely on reviews, with 48% consulting them before applying.

Inconsistencies reflected on Glassdoor or third-party websites can harm your company's integrity and professionalism, diluting job seekers in different directions and potentially causing you to miss out on exceptional hires.

Maintaining a unified voice and up-to-date information across company pages is crucial for a cohesive employer branding strategy. See the data below to understand the importance of consistent branding.

1. Consistency across branding, including logos and messaging, leads to three to four times more visibility across platforms.
2. Job seekers often need to see an ad around 4.4 times before taking action.
3. Consistency is crucial for brand loyalty, with 41% of consumers valuing it most.
4. A Glassdoor study found that job seekers exposed to a company's brand 10 or more times were eight times more likely to apply.
5. Consistent brand presentation across all platforms can increase revenue by up to 23%.

How to manage your employer brand effectively
72% of recruiting leaders worldwide agree that employer brand has a significant impact on hiring and since a bad employer reputation could almost lead to a loss of 10,000 employees. Here’s why you should consider managing it effectively.

#1 Claim and customise the company page
Ensure that your client's company page on Indeed is claimed and fully customised. This sets the stage for a consistent and impactful online presence.

#2 Optimise imagery
The client's brand on Indeed should mirror the brand on their website. Verify that the cover image is clear and aligns with the marketing campaigns. Ensure that the text in the images matches the current messaging.

#3 Maintain logo consistency
Confirm that the company logo is clear, up-to-date, and consistent with the branding used across other platforms. Consistency in logo reinforces brand recognition.

#4 Leverage the 'Join us' section
The 'Join us' section offers an excellent opportunity to highlight your client's strengths and initiatives. Highlight diversity, inclusion, charity partnerships, and the organisation's culture. Keep this section up to date to present a well-managed and professional brand image.

#5 Manage questions and reviews
Develop a strategy for addressing job seeker questions by actively replying to reviews, as 75% are likely to apply when the employer manages its brand actively. Encourage more employee reviews to positively impact candidate applications and the company's reputation. Prioritise addressing negative comments, and craft detailed, thoughtful replies to enhance brand perception.

Summary
Online reviews, such as those on Indeed and Glassdoor, significantly influence job seekers' perceptions of a company. Therefore, maintaining a unified and consistent brand image across platforms is essential for attracting the right talent.

Managing employer brand effectively involves customising company pages, optimizing imagery, maintaining logo consistency, leveraging 'Join us' sections, and actively responding to reviews and questions to enhance brand perception and build a strong reputation on review sites.

Maximum x Glassdoor + Indeed: Closing the gap between what you want to do and what you can do.

At Maximum, we recognise that for many employer brand teams, best practices and working reality are often at odds. Budget constraints, resource limitations, and the many complexities of life within a large organisation means that much of the time, it’s a question of balancing competing needs, prioritising, and making trade-offs. This is exactly why we have partnered with Glassdoor and Indeed.

Together, we’re best placed to maximise the ROI of your investment. Focused insights. Targeted solutions. All delivered where it can make the most impact — two of the world’s leading job portals.

This article was written by Suyue Zhou, General Manager, Maximum Shanghai.

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ALSO READ: Elevate your employer brand reputation: How to reply to employee reviews on Glassdoor

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Photo: Provided by Maximum