It happens!

Our time is the time of everyone’s reviews about everything on the Internet. On their basis, people quite often make decisions regarding the purchase of household appliances, an apartment in a new area, and even a new place of work. Sometimes a person reads negative things that former employees say about the company on specialized sites, and decides not to contact it. What if this company is yours?

“That’s it” – happens when the candidate has not passed the Probationary Period. A fired employee harbored a grudge against a former employer, and in the heat of the moment, a former subordinate can be capable of many things: from formatting a hard drive to spreading company secrets.

The first dilemma faced by HR when such feedback appears: to respond or not? On the one hand, it is necessary to somehow defend the company’s image, and on the other hand, to write answers on such sites is like “descending to the level of haters.” It is better to answer, because, no matter what, reviews about a company on the Internet affect its image. The answer will help you: refute fake messages, show the company “in a better light” when the feedback is true, but one-sided; figure out what went wrong and make things better if the ex-employee is right.

Here we have such a situation, a former employee did not pass the probationary period.

The purpose of the probationary period in this case is to determine whether the new employee is suitable for the company and whether he can perform the job well. On the other hand, it is a great opportunity for new employees to familiarize themselves with the organizational nuances and internal culture of the company and decide whether their work suits them. But it turned out that way – the employee did not pass the probationary period.

What should be done with such ex-employees, and how can the company avoid such retaliation?

Employees must be treated decently. If a person has to be released, then all legal procedures must be followed, so that there are no court proceedings. We did so!

But negative feedback about your company can be quite damaging. When the emotions subsided, it was time to rationally approach everything written. Carefully read the review and find out if there is any truth in it. If the entire message is one continuous insult without any arguments, you can clarify what exactly is wrong. Try to direct a person in a rational direction. It doesn’t work – stop, hardly anyone will take such feedback seriously. If there is a specific complaint, then it is necessary to “dig” in the appropriate direction: a “former employee” complains about the “unprofessionalism” of the HR service – talk to the person who worked with him, processed the dismissal, find out how everything went; the main topic of the message is the direct manager, so it is worth talking to other subordinates, conducting an anonymous survey about interaction with the manager; if the problem concerns the whole company (low salaries, bad atmosphere, inefficient processes) – again, you can get the opinion of other employees. Such a little research will help you get a more or less objective picture of the situation that happened, write a reasoned response and correct mistakes and shortcomings if the criticism was “on point”.

Recommendations for the answer:

when writing, remember that the main purpose of your message is to convey information, not to your angry ex-employee, but to potential candidates;

write in a fairly formal language, in a calm tone. Any emotional expressions, especially insults, are prohibited;

write from the company account or from your corporate account so that it is clear that this is an official position;

write the truth If a person is right about something, admit it. And then tell us what you did to prevent this from happening.

All these recommendations are relevant when you are working with reviews from real employees, even if they are former ones. When it comes to trolls, the main rule is to identify them in time and stop communication. You can complain about them to the site’s support service, if there is one.

Tell me, have you had such cases?

Please share!