When was the last time you checked to see if your association has been reviewed on Glassdoor, Vault, or another employee review site? If your answer is "never," then you are missing a golden opportunity to learn what employees and interviewees have to say about your association—and to thoughtfully respond to criticisms and make adjustments that may improve your company culture.

Employee review sites are gaining attention among job-seekers as they navigate social media to research potential employers—to comparison shop before making a career decision. These sites offer basic company information, job positions, salaries, and reviews. Glassdoor.com, for example, allows current and former employees to anonymously rate their companies on a scale of 1 to 5 and post a statement of at least one "pro" and one "con" of working for the organization. And Vault.com provides employer rankings based on the responses it receives from survey respondents questioned about their opinions of their own firms.

All it takes is one person putting up a review for your association to start getting a bad reputation.—Adele Cehrs, Epic PR Group

Association executives at all types of organizations should be paying attention to employee review sites, says Adele Cehrs, president of Epic PR Group and author of Spike Your Brand ROI, published by ASAE and Wiley. Though larger associations will receive a greater number of reviews, "all it takes is one person putting up a review for your association to start getting a bad reputation," she says. And negative reviews may prove especially challenging for associations, if tech-savvy board members decide to browse these sites to get a feel for public opinion. "I've even seen past presidents critique associations" on employee review sites, says Cehrs.

As Glassdoor and similar sites become a staple of the job search process for workers of all ages, associations must set a strategy to monitor them and even find ways to improve their rankings and reviews, says Cehrs. "Many review sites go unnoticed or unsubstantiated, which can hurt the brand in the long term," she says.

Keeping tabs on such sites should be part of an overall social media audit process that associations should conduct regularly to find out how people view the organization's brand and identify the negatives that are being reported. Cehrs offers the following suggestions for implementing a strategy to monitor employee review sites:

• Task specific staff members with the responsibility of monitoring employee review sites. "Don't leave social media up to interns and junior-level staff," says Cehrs. "It's a misstep to have the most junior people managing this responsibility, and junior employees lack the hindsight and intuition to make competitive business decisions. It's unfair to put this important responsibility on them." Instead, Cehrs suggests these sites be monitored jointly by one junior-level staff member and one senior-level person working together.
• Set up alerts to identify when reviews have been posted. Speed is of the essence when dealing with social media, so site monitoring cannot be a "sporadic" task.
• Respond quickly to new postings. Once a review is posted—negative or positive—it should be immediately addressed, says Cehrs. If the site will allow you to respond, "validate the feedback, and explain what you're doing well," as well as steps you're taking to improve in the criticized areas.
• Communicate with staff. Talking to internal staff about a "con" that was posted about your organization can help you determine the extent of the problem and how it should be handled. "If you have one bad manager or a few bad leaders, you have to address it," Cehrs says. "Quick follow-up can help prevent a full-blown PR crisis."
• Encourage participation in employee review sites. Let all staff members know you are monitoring these sites and appreciate employee feedback. Then encourage employees to share their positive experiences on these sites; failure to do so is a "missed opportunity," says Cehrs: "It would boost your brand to bring positive experiences to light."
• Make sure you have an effective exit interview process in place. Give employees who are exiting a forum to share any dissatisfactions with the association, so they have an outlet before they leave and don't feel a need to vent leftover frustrations on a site such as Glassdoor.

Once you have implemented a process to monitor employee review sites, remember that negative reviews should not be taken personally and should be leveraged to improve company culture. As more positive reviews get posted, more attractive job candidates will be drawn to your organization.

"Not only can monitoring these sites help improve your brand; it also can help your association fix retention issues," says Cehrs. Ignoring these sites is not the answer, but learning from them and using them to your advantage can be a boon to your association in the long run.