SEO

Why You Should Focus on Staff Reviews as Well as Customer Reviews

March 6, 2020 , 4 minutes
staff working

Customer reviews play a big part in the success of a business. Social proof is so important when building your brand, so making your customers happy often feels like priority number one. In many ways, it should be. Google reviews – especially if your SEO strategy is on point, testimonials on your website, and reviews on industry-specific websites can encourage or discourage potential customers from using your services.

But there’s another type of review making waves in the business world, and they can be just as important as customer reviews. We’re talking about staff reviews, and they can make an immeasurable difference to businesses.

What are Staff Reviews?

In recent years, an emerging concept in the business world is the staff review. Through popular websites like Glassdoor, current or former staff can post reviews of your business from an employment point of view. Through these reviews, staff will rate your business on some key points such as:

  • Interviews
  • Salary
  • Benefits
  • Work-life balance
  • Senior Management
  • Career progression
  • Culture and values

This list isn’t exhaustive, but as you can see, people have the opportunity to review your business inside and out. While you may not think this information can really impact on your bottom line – after all, potential customers are more likely to read customer reviews – the fact is, staff reviews can indirectly impact your business in ways you may not have considered.

Staff Engagement Impacts Your Customers

It’s no myth that happy staff are more likely to inspire happy customers. Particularly in customer service roles, we don’t need to tell you that engaged staff are going to be better at selling, building rapport and making your customers feel appreciated, but it goes a little deeper than that.

Research from Gallup indicates that businesses with highly engaged staff are more productive, more attuned to the needs of customers, and produce 21% greater profitability. If you’re wondering how that relates to your bottom line, the report also showed that highly engaged business units reported a 10% increase in customer ratings and a 20% increase in sales.

If your staff reviews are showing dissatisfaction, you may have an employee engagement problem you’re not even aware off. Worst of all, it could be affecting your bottom line.

Understand What Staff Want

Staff reviews can show you precisely what people do and don’t like about working for your business. It’s not supposed to all be negative – if you’re seeing your company score highly on work-life balance, you know you’re doing something right and this should be celebrated. But if you’re scoring poorly in other areas, it gives you the chance to focus your efforts into improving. 

You may have done staff engagement surveys in the past, but there’s a possibility that current staff aren’t willing to report all of their concerns. On an external staff review website, however, they’ll feel far more comfortable airing all of their issues. These reviews give you some good statistical data, but even more valuable is the free-text component where people can share their experiences in their own words. 

Attracting the Best Talent

It’s no secret that all businesses want to attract the top talent to work for them. The new player in the employment process though, is the staff review. Research indicates that over half of jobseekers are now using staff review websites like Glassdoor to find out more about a company before applying.

We don’t need to tell you that poor online staff reviews may be a deterrent for the best job applicants. In a crowded job market where the top talent out there is starting to place more value on conditions, culture and work-life balance over remuneration, it’s now more important than ever to ensure your company has a great reputation as an employer.

If you’ve got your staff engagement in order, it’s time to start attracting more leads, more conversions and more profits. For expert help in marketing your business,  contact us to find out how we can help!