It’s not just an irate consumer, a competitor, or an unnecessarily demanding customer that a business owner needs to be aware of and concerned about writing a bad or negative review.

Employees or former employees can be equally damaging. Of course, as an owner or manager you’ll only want good reviews from your customers but the inevitable bad review is part of being in business.

Removing bad, negative, unfair, dishonest, fraudulent, and inaccurate reviews from customers or competitors has become essential to many businesses.

However, did you really ever think that you had to worry about bad reviews coming from a former, or even current employee, and that your business could be hurt by their review?

Well, in this day and age of the internet and the ability for anyone, even those who are wrong and cloaked behind a veil of cyber anonymity, have the power to exercise power over you and your business, every review matters.

The Impact of Employee Reviews

There are websites dedicated to allowing employees to rate and grade their employers.

Regardless of whether the reviewer has been a horrible employee, stolen from you, wasn’t following the rules and guidelines of your business, or a host of other reasons for their termination, they still can and do write bad reviews.

They do make a difference. The reason is that they can cast a negative and ugly image of you and your company to the public.

Social consciousness is surely a factor in many customer’s decision about which business to support.

If they read that a company is harassing its employees, doesn’t have fair labor practices, doesn’t pay fair wages, doesn’t care about their staff, is greedy, or is the cause of a plethora of other gripes or criticisms, it makes many consumers leery of frequenting the business.

The Influence of Employee Review Websites

Sites such as Indeed.com or Glassdoor.com are specifically dedicated to employee reviews.

Because of the strength and the frequency of the sites, they frequently appear very high atop the Google and other search engines.

This is especially important because when a potential customer opens your page on Google, these review ratings are often right on the first page where all potential customers see them.

With the short attention span of so many consumers on the internet, many simply jump off your page if they see a bad overall review rating, whether it comes from a customer review site such as Google, TripAdvisor, or Yelp or an employee review site such as Indeed or Glassdoor.

Even though each site may speak to a separate audience, the bad overall review rating may be all that they see.

Limitations of Online Reputation Management (ORM) Services

Most Online Reputation Management (ORM) services don’t actually remove bad reviews.

They attempt to suppress them or push them down so they are no longer on the first page. Even if successful however, the bad review remains.

Businesses understandably request and greatly desire the complete removal of a bad review.

Research will reflect that only an extremely small number of companies know how to provide this service legitimately.

It is imperative that if a company provides this service that they guarantee that you won’t be billed until or unless the review is removed.

They should be willing to back up their claims. Most don’t. If they do, you are likely on a better path for success.

Business owners or managers often wonder; How do we even respond when Indeed reviews are anonymous ? Are anonymous Glassdoor reviews permissible?

Well, quite simply the answer is, yes. Which makes it all the more difficult and frustrating for the business owner who doesn’t even know who he/she is responding to or to what specifically.

That’s why removing a negative review is so important.

To remove Indeed review or reviews or to remove Glassdoor review or reviews is often the only line of defense that a business owner has against an untrue, defamatory, or retaliatory negative review from a past or present employee.

Very few companies have the skill, expertise, or knowledge as to how to delete Indeed review or reviews. The same applies to whether it’s possible to delete a Glassdoor review or reviews.

Finding the Right Reputation Management Partner

It is imperative to locate a company you can trust, who provides a guarantee that no payment is due until success is achieved, and who utilizes legitimate means to have such bad and negative reviews deleted from past or present employees.

Many anonymous reviews may not have even been written by an actual employee but rather by a competitor.

It is not beyond some competitors to dissuade a good possible employee from joining your company by posting a false bad review under the pretenses of being an employee. Removal is likely your best defense.