Do’s and Don’ts of Replying to Employee Reviews
Discover proven strategies for responding to employee reviews, improving your employer reputation, increasing review ratings, and building a stronger workplace brand that attracts top talent.
Watch Length
43:30
Trainer Bio
Matt R. Vance is a social innovator. He is the Co-Founder & CEO of Mobrium, Co-Host of The Culture Profit Podcast and award-winning author of The Review Cycle.
His work and research center around human behaviors, perceptions and experience design. He has built employee and consumer experience programs at multiple global organizations, including iFIT and Malouf Companies and has consulted executives at a wide range of other organizations.
In the past decade Matt has managed over 3,000 employer, product and brand review profiles and listings for dozens of companies. He has trained more than 1,000 professionals with his innovative approaches to company culture and reputation management. He has been a keynote speaker and presenter at many professional events including Silicon Slopes Tech Summit and at several universities.
His work has been nationally recognized with honors from Glassdoor, Utah Business, Comparably, and InHerSight. His acclaimed book, The Review Cycle, outlines how companies can supercharge sales and design better experiences for consumers and employees by mastering online reviews.
Matt received his bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Utah State University where he also competed in track and cross-country. He loves to crochet and tell dad jokes. He lives in Logan, Utah with his wife Crista and their four children.
Employee reviews are more than ratings and comments on Glassdoor, Indeed, Comparably, and other employer-review platforms. They are public conversations about what it is like to work for your organization—and they can influence whether a candidate applies, an employee stays, or a prospective hire chooses another employer.
Yet many organizations either ignore employee reviews or respond with generic messages such as, “Thank you for your feedback.” While that may technically acknowledge a review, it does little to shape how future readers perceive your organization.
A strategic review response program can do much more. It can build trust, strengthen your employer brand, provide useful information to candidates, and demonstrate how your organization handles both praise and criticism.
Here is how to build an effective employee review response strategy.
Why Respond to Employee Reviews?
Build Trust
When candidates research an employer, they are not only reading employee reviews. They are also watching how the company responds.
A thoughtful response to a difficult review can demonstrate that your organization listens, takes concerns seriously, and is willing to address difficult issues. Even when a problem cannot be resolved publicly, your response can show prospective employees that there is a responsible organization behind the profile.
The key is to remember that your response is not just for the person who wrote the review. Your real audience is everyone else reading it.
Imagine a candidate finding a highly critical review while researching your company. They then see a calm, specific response that acknowledges the concern, provides appropriate context, and invites the reviewer to continue the conversation privately.
The candidate may not agree with everything the reviewer wrote, but they can see how the company behaves when something goes wrong. That can build confidence and increase application intent.
Increase Star Ratings
A strategic response can sometimes encourage a reviewer to update their rating when the platform allows it.
The goal should never be to pressure someone into changing a review. Instead, address the underlying concern, provide support where appropriate, and invite the reviewer to update their review if they believe their overall experience has changed.
A useful approach is to ask whether they would be willing to update their review so it reflects their full experience.
When a negative experience has been followed by a meaningful resolution, the updated review may provide a more complete picture of the employee’s experience.
Control the Narrative
Employee reviews can contain incomplete information, misunderstandings, or claims that are inaccurate. Leaving those statements unanswered allows readers to form conclusions without hearing the organization’s perspective.
A response gives you an opportunity to provide context and correct the record.
That does not mean arguing with reviewers or trying to “win” a public debate. Strong responses are calm, factual, and focused on helping future readers understand the situation.
How to Respond to Employee Reviews
Other Readers Are Your Target Audience
One of the most important principles of review management is to stop thinking of your response as a private conversation with the reviewer.
It is public communication.
The reviewer may never respond. They may not even read your reply. But candidates researching your organization will.
Think of the review page as a stage. The reviewer has shared their experience, and your organization now has an opportunity to demonstrate its values to the audience watching.
Before publishing a response, ask:
“What should a prospective employee understand after reading this?”
That question will produce a much better response than, “How do we defend ourselves?”
Always Personalize Your Replies
Avoid copy-and-paste responses.
If every review receives essentially the same message, readers can quickly conclude that your organization is responding simply to check a box.
Personalization does not mean creating an entirely different response every time. You can have consistent openings, closings, tone, and structure. However, the substance should reflect the specific review.
Instead of:
“Thank you for your feedback. We value all employee perspectives.”
Try addressing the actual concern:
“We appreciate you highlighting your experience with manager communication. Leadership development is an important part of our culture, and employees have resources available when they need support navigating concerns with a manager.”
The second response gives readers useful information about the organization.
Follow the 3QPD Rule
You do not need to respond to every review.
A practical framework is the 3QPD rule:
3 — Respond to reviews rated three stars or lower.
Q — Respond when a review contains a question.
P — Respond to selected positive reviews.
D — Respond when additional details or clarification would be useful.
This creates a strategic mix of responses without requiring your team to engage with every review.
The exact percentage will vary depending on your review volume and rating distribution. The objective is to be visible and responsive without making every review page feel dominated by the company.
Use Mirror Messaging
Mirror messaging means reflecting the specific themes raised by the reviewer without unnecessarily adopting their emotional language or agreeing with claims that have not been verified.
Suppose an employee writes:
“My manager is impossible to work with and the benefits are terrible.”
A thoughtful response could acknowledge both topics without validating those statements as objective facts:
“We’re sorry to hear that your experience with manager communication and our benefits did not meet your expectations. Our managers participate in leadership training aligned with our company values, and our benefits are regularly reviewed against industry benchmarks.”
The response shows that you actually read the review while providing readers with additional context.
An important distinction is to mirror feelings and concerns, rather than automatically mirroring supposed facts.
Instead of:
“We’re sorry that our managers treat employees poorly.”
Consider:
“We’re sorry you felt unsupported by your manager.”
The second statement acknowledges the employee’s experience without making an unverified factual admission.
Use passive voice for problems, active voice for solutions.
When a review contains an inaccurate claim, the natural reaction may be to become defensive.
Avoid it.
Instead of:
“You are wrong. That never happened.”
Use a calm, factual tone:
“Following the review, the matter was investigated, relevant records were reviewed, and the claim could not be substantiated.”
This focuses attention on what happened rather than attacking the reviewer.
Passive voice can be especially useful when correcting inaccurate claims because it creates distance from an emotionally charged confrontation.
The goal is not to embarrass the reviewer. It is to give future readers a credible alternative account.
For allegations involving discrimination, harassment, illegal activity, or other serious matters, involve the appropriate HR, legal, or compliance stakeholders before publishing a response.
Answer the Unasked Question
Great review responses often go beyond the question or complaint that was explicitly written.
Why? Because your response is also speaking to future candidates.
Suppose an employee mentions the company’s volunteer-time program but is unsure what activities qualify.
You could simply answer the question. Or you could provide useful additional context:
“Our team members can use paid volunteer time for approved nonprofit activities, with up to four hours available each month. Employees can also suggest additional organizations for consideration through HR.”
The reviewer gets an answer, but prospective employees also learn something positive and concrete about the company.
Think of your response as a small billboard for your employee experience.
Don’t Just Say “Thank You” to Positive Reviews
Positive reviews deserve responses too—but “Thanks for the review!” is rarely enough.
Instead, mirror something specific.
If an employee praises career development, mention your approach to development. If they praise flexibility, explain what makes the program meaningful. If they mention community involvement, expand on that initiative.
For example:
“Thank you for highlighting our professional development programs. We’re especially proud of the opportunities employees have to build new skills through coaching, internal learning programs, and cross-functional projects.”
Your response reinforces a positive aspect of the employee experience for everyone reading.
Designing Your Review Response Program
Start With a Reputation Audit
Before creating a response strategy, understand your current reputation.
Identify where your organization has employer profiles, including major platforms such as Glassdoor, Indeed, Comparably, and other relevant review sites.
Document your current ratings, review volume, recent reviews, unanswered negative reviews, unanswered questions, positive reviews worth responding to, and profiles that need attention.
A reputation audit gives your team a clear starting point.
Mobrium can help make this process more systematic, giving you one organized place to track ratings, reviews, and response activity across every platform.
Assign Ownership
Someone needs to own the process.
Determine who monitors review platforms, drafts responses, approves them, handles sensitive issues, and tracks activity.
Without clear ownership, review management can become everyone’s responsibility—which often means nobody’s responsibility.
Get Trained on Response Strategy
Writing an effective employee review response requires more than good grammar.
Your team should understand reputation strategy, tone, personalization, privacy, escalation procedures, and how to respond to inaccurate or emotionally charged claims.
Training also creates consistency when multiple people are responsible for responding.
Make Your Review Response Document
Create a living document containing your response principles and examples.
Include your approved tone and voice, opening and closing conventions, examples of strong responses, common employee-review topics, escalation guidelines, approved contact information, and frequently asked questions.
The document should be a reference—not a collection of scripts to copy and paste.
Create a Response Tracking Sheet
Track your review activity over time.
At minimum, record the date checked, platform, number of new reviews, number of responses, review rating, major topic, whether escalation was required, and response date.
Tracking helps your team maintain consistency and identify patterns in employee feedback.
Make a Team Response Playbook
Create a simple playbook so your team knows exactly how to handle employee reviews. It should cover how to monitor platforms, identify which reviews need a response, personalize each reply, verify facts, and escalate sensitive issues when necessary.
Keep a record of responses and follow up offline when a conversation requires more detail or confidentiality.
A clear playbook keeps your responses consistent, professional, and strategic—without making them feel scripted.
Build a Review Strategy That Builds Trust
Employee reviews are part of a larger reputation cycle. Organizations can collect feedback, respond to it, learn from it, and use what they learn to improve the employee experience.
The goal isn’t to make negative reviews disappear. It is to create a credible public record showing how your organization listens, communicates, and improves.
Start with a reputation audit. Establish ownership. Train your team. Create a response document and tracking system. Then use a playbook to make responses consistent without making them robotic.
Ready to make review responses part of your reputation strategy?
Schedule a session with a Mobrium expert to see how the platform can help you monitor, respond to, and learn from employee reviews across every platform.
This article qualifies for SHRM professional development credit. To claim your credit, complete the SHRM credits Google Form on this page and follow the instructions provided.
