How does Glassdoor manage and moderate reviews? Here's everything you need to know from clear guidelines to how to flag a review.
Glassdoor strives to be the most trusted and transparent place for today's candidate to search for jobs and research companies. Our purpose - which is really two sides of the same coin - serves both employees and employers. Every employer in the world wants to hire great people who stay productive and engaged. And every person wants to find a job they love. Unfortunately, great employees and a perfect job are difficult to find. Employers often have to sift through hundreds, if not thousands of applications searching for the perfect match. Job seekers become disappointed when they find out the company culture promoted on the company website is not actually a reality.
[Read more: The Ultimate Guide to Glassdoor Reviews, Including Best Practices for Deploying Glassdoor Review Intelligence™]
That's why Glassdoor is committed to protecting the authenticity and integrity of reviews. Both companies and employees win when it's a good fit. For employees, engagement, satisfaction, productivity and innovation skyrocket. And for employers, reputation, recruitment success, innovation and efficiency improve.
To this end, we follow simple principles and guidelines to ensure the most authentic, transparent, and valuable information is available to workers and job candidates while balancing fairness to employers.
- We never edit or alter the text of reviews or comments submitted on our site, no matter how minor.
- We never suppress, filter, or delete content* simply because it is negative/lower-rated, or positive/higher-rated.
- We apply the same standard of review for all content (whether or not the content involves an employer client of Glassdoor).
- We require email verification from a permanent, active email address or a valid social networking account for each user submitting content.
- We moderate every piece of content through a two-step moderation process. The first gate of review is technological. We apply proprietary technology that analyzes multiple attributes of the content. If the content does not pass technological review, a team of human moderators reviews the content to determine if it meets our guidelines. Additionally, a human always moderates any piece of content that is flagged for secondary review.
- We use proprietary technology filters & algorithms to detect attempted abuse and gaming.
- We stay neutral in all cases of dispute; we don't take sides and we don't act as the finder of fact with respect to review content.
- We remove content if we have evidence that users were incentivized to or coerced into leaving the content.
- We believe in the principle of anonymity and free speech - everyone has a right to voice his or her opinion and be heard without fear of retribution, censorship or other unwanted attention.
- We believe each employer has the right to respond to a review left by a member for free, and that the employer be given the last word on a review.
[Related: Responding to Negative Glassdoor Reviews: FAQs]
Glassdoor Reviews Guidelines
Millions of job seekers rely on Glassdoor's reviews and other user-submitted content to find jobs and companies they love. Reviewers are instructed to follow these guidelines to ensure everyone can benefit from a helpful, balanced, and authentic community:
- Every review should be truthful and constitute your own personal opinion and experience with your current or former employer. We don't take sides when it comes to factual disputes, so we expect you to stand behind your statements expressed in your content.
- Each individual is allowed one review, per employer, per year, per review type. If a user updates a review within a year, the older review will be archived and the newer review will be listed. Your content should be related to jobs you have held (or interviews you have had) within the last five years so it's relevant to today's job seeker.
- We encourage you to think about work from a few perspectives and include both a pro and a con to provide a balanced review. While not required, we do believe balanced reviews make for a better community experience.
We allow reviews that name individuals in the highest positions in a company who have broad influence over the work environment, as long as the review describes the individual's behavior or performance at work. Individuals in this category include those who are the public face of the company (C-Suite, Executive Director, President, Owner, Founder, etc.) We believe this information is generally representative of a company's culture and can be informative to job candidates. - We do not allow reviews that include negative comments about identifiable individuals outside of this group.
- We realize talking about work can get emotionally charged, but we don't approve reviews that include certain profanities, threats of violence, or discriminatory language targeted at an individual or group. We may allow reviews that mention race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation and the like if we believe the comment is used to describe a workplace situation. General discussions of workplace misconduct are allowed, including most discussions of illegal activities, discrimination, and sexual harassment.
- We do not accept reviews that reveal confidential, non-public internal company information. We consider this to include: source code, customer lists, manufacturing techniques, R&D activities, budgets, detailed financial results and technical know-how.
- To safeguard privacy, we do not allow you to identify yourself or include any contact information (about yourself or others) in your posts.
- Glassdoor is about sharing information that helps the entire community. We reject reviews that do not relate to an employer, are only a review of the product or service, or are otherwise not relevant to understanding a workplace culture. We will reject any content meant as an advertisement or containing a web link.
- All reviews should be original - no substantial quoted material from other sources, including (but not limited to) websites, e-mail correspondence, other reviews, etc.
- Your writing doesn't have to be perfect, but we need to be able to understand it. We reject reviews for excessive capitalization or filler words/characters. And remember, your review will be more credible if you use good grammar, spelling and punctuation.
- Our Community Guidelines and moderation policies take into consideration applicable laws in the different international markets in which Glassdoor operates.
[Related: 6 Major Pain Points About Glassdoor Reviews and How to Solve Them]
Honest, Authentic Glassdoor Reviews Only
We love it when companies encourage their employees and job candidates to share honest reviews on Glassdoor, but do not offer incentives in exchange for reviews. We will remove positive reviews where we have evidence that employees were compensated and/or coerced into leaving a review. Glassdoor believes in anonymity, so we don't allow employers to ask workers to show confirmation of posting on Glassdoor.
We expect all of our users to follow these guidelines, as well as Glassdoor's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Glassdoor reserves the right to remove a review or employer response at any time for any reason. The reviews approved and posted on Glassdoor are individual and highly subjective opinions. The opinions expressed in reviews are those of Glassdoor users and not of Glassdoor, Inc.
If you see something on Glassdoor that you believe violates our guidelines, you should flag it for our review. We will reply via email with our decision; we do not accept or return phone calls. Keep in mind that flagging a piece of content for a second look does not guarantee that it will be removed from the site. Because of the diversity of our community, it's possible that something could be disagreeable or disturbing to you without meeting the criteria for being removed or blocked.
We ask our users to understand that we apply the same standard of review for all content (whether or not the content concerns an employer client of Glassdoor). Ultimately, content decisions are within our sole discretion and we do not negotiate about our application of a guideline to our final decision as to whether or not a piece of content warrants removal. For more information, see our Legal FAQs.
[Read more: 10 Powerful Things You Can Do with Review Intelligence™]
How to Report Inappropriate Content on Glassdoor
At Glassdoor, in addition to our internal processes, we also rely on our members to help us maintain the integrity of our content. If you see anything that you feel is inconsistent with our Terms of Use or Community Guidelines, we encourage you to report it and tell us why.
To report inappropriate content:
- Click the Flag icon located below the content.
- Choose one reason you are reporting the review from the drop-down menu. Reasons include:
- This review violates Glassdoor's guidelines.
- This review contains false information.
- The same person has written multiple reviews.
- This review was written by management or HR.
- This review is for the wrong company.
- I want to comment on this review.
- None of the choices above apply.
- Click Next.
- If a text box is provided (limited to 1,500 characters or less), explain why you are reporting the review
- Note: This information can only be seen by Glassdoor's internal content moderators. It will not be posted on the site, and neither the employee who posted the reviews nor the employer it pertains to will see it.
- Click Submit or Close.
- Click Got it!
Note: We will reply back to you within 72 business hours, after we have evaluated the flagged content, with a decision on whether we've chosen to remove it from our site. If an on-screen response is received indicating otherwise, an email response will not be sent.
*Glassdoor uses the term 'content' to describe reviews, salary data, interview reviews, benefits reviews, photos, awards, and other user-submitted content.
How you respond to reviews matters to the health of your business. To get involved in the conversation on Glassdoor and start managing and promoting your employer brand reputation, unlock your Free Employer Profile today.
