Your company reputation plays a large role in areas like recruitment and retention. If your business becomes known as a bad employer, you aren’t going to be able to secure the top talent you need to thrive.

Even a few negative employee reviews can be incredibly damaging. Thanks to technology, current and former workers can air their grievances regarding their experience, serving as potential warnings to others who may choose to apply to work for your company.

If you are struggling against your company’s bad reputation, you are missing out on great talent. This means you need to take action. Otherwise, you aren’t going to find the high-quality employees you need to succeed. If you aren’t sure how to begin, here are a few tips to get you started.

The first step you need to take is to accurately assess your employer brand. This allows you to thoroughly explore your reputation, creating a foundation that will enable you to take action.

Begin by reading any online reviews that are available. See if there are any patterns that indicate a serious shortcoming or long-term issue. As you do, resist the urge to defend your company. While you can reply to negative reviews, if you don’t choose your words wisely, you may only come off as defensive or bitter, which won’t make things better.

Next, you can start examining your company as it stands today. What is your workplace culture like? Are your employees engaged, happy, or satisfied? Are there any complaints filed with managers or HR that need to be addressed? Are your salary and benefits offerings competitive?

The idea is to carefully audit your current reputation, as this allows you to identify potential points for improvement.

Once you have a thorough grasp on how you measure up today, you can create plans for improving on any weak areas. How you need to proceed may vary depending on your unique situation. However, it can be wise to focus on aspects of your company that attracted the most negative attention and not necessarily the points that would be quick to fix.

If you openly admit the company could do better in areas your employees view as important and take active steps to make progress, you show that you take their perspective seriously. This can be critical when you are working to improve your employer brand, especially if your company has a bad reputation to overcome.

However, even if you begin to move forward, don’t expect sentiment to change overnight. Repairing a reputation takes time, so acknowledge that it may be a long round ahead but that it is crucial you walk it. Otherwise, you may find yourself losing out on top talent for years to come, and that isn’t going to help your goals either.

If you are interested in learning more about managing your company reputation, the professionals at TempStaff can help. Contact us to speak with one of our knowledgeable team members today and see how our workplace expertise can benefit you and your company reputation.