Employee Testimonials: An Effective Element of Your HR Policy

In an era when machines are largely leveling the playing field for companies, HR policies are coming to the fore, in which employee testimonials play a significant role. They can motivate top professionals in the industry to choose your company, or vice versa, depending on the content and your ability to use it.

A statistical study has shown that job seekers tend to trust employees' words three times more than the organization when deciding to work in a company, stressing the importance of employee testimonials. Therefore, this blog will share with you the significance of employee testimonials, their incorporation into the HR policy, and how they can lead to attracting unique talent.

What are employee testimonials?

Employee testimonials are first-person narratives about working for a particular company. In many respects, they are subjective and may not accurately reflect the actual employment environment. However, highly qualified professionals often use them to research a company in detail before submitting a CV or completing a test assignment.

Employee testimonials usually contain valuable information concerning:

• Actual duties and how they differ from job descriptions;
• The company culture and the attitudes of supervisors toward employees;
• Team environment and communication style;
• Career opportunities;
• Hidden rewards and punishments are not mentioned in the job offer.

Employee feedback is more than an element of personnel policy. It also affects the overall brand reputation. Managing feedback effectively will enable you to get more customers and attract reliable business partners.

Different forms of employee testimonials

Modern technologies allow company employees to share their experiences in various ways. On the one hand, this makes it difficult to monitor them, but on the other hand, it gives you a unique opportunity to promote your company. The following are the most common forms of testimonials from employees:

• Text: They are often written at the employer's request, for example, as part of the final interview. Short excerpts from them are published on the site, in advertisements, or presentation materials.
• Videos: They attract the attention of a wide audience and help to demonstrate the advantages/disadvantages of a company vividly. A quality video will help you draw attention to the positive aspects of corporate culture and even show it in the workplace. You can also use a free video editing app, to create short videos that showcase your company's culture and values. These apps offer a variety of features, templates, and resources that you can use to create your videos.
• Audio: Audio testimonials function similarly to videos but offer a cost-effective approach. They allow employees to delve into their experiences with your company, comparing its culture to previous workplaces. Employees can either record their own audio or craft a script and use a text to speech tool to generate audio. This versatile method broadens your reach, giving employees a platform to share their stories and insights in a budget-friendly manner.
• LinkedIn recommendations: Testimonials on a popular social platform that connects employees and employers. They are very popular due to how easy it is to search for a specific brand and the possibility of sorting by ranking.
• Blog posts: Often positioned as independent reviews. They can be written on behalf of the blogger, their guest, or an anonymous source. We should note that popular influencers often decide companies' fate — they can bring people to love a business or ruin it in days.
• Reviews on industry-specific platforms: An example is the famous portal Glassdoor. It often publishes a lot of testimonials — not always positive and not always honest. So, you should deal with negativity and maintain a positive reputation.
• Case studies: A detailed study of an employee's experience by a third party, such as a consulting company or a rating bureau. The results of such a study can be included in marketing materials, presentations, and conference presentations.

How to effectively share employee testimonials?

HR policy requires proper attention, like all aspects of a company's activities. Proactive work will help you significantly improve your brand's reputation and attract highly qualified professionals. You can even increase employee retention by reducing the resignation rate in the long run. Here are some ways you can promote positive work testimonials.

1. Company website

You should create a separate company testimonials page. On it, you can carefully select testimonials to post. To make this section look natural and as useful as possible, follow these guidelines:

• Add new information regularly — post quotes, videos, blog links, etc. Update the page at least once every 2-3 months. If you don't, monotonous content will look suspicious.
• Real people should write all reviews. Don't copy them from other sources or rely on AI to do the job. Even the slightest suspicion can seriously damage your company's reputation.
• Publish varied content. This can be short posts or lengthy arguments that open with a click. Ensure they address all the important aspects — company culture, career development, team relationships, etc.
  

You must make the testimonial page visible in search engines. When a job seeker looks for reviews about your company in a Google search, your content should get to the top rather than random reviews of unknown content from third-party resources.  To make this happen, you need to incorporate SEO optimization techniques such as utilizing expired domains to enhance the visibility of your brand in search results:

• Conduct thorough keyword research to find the best-performing keywords, including brand ones.
• Make sure that your site loads quickly and does not contain any technical errors.
• Improve the user experience (UX) — ensure the page is easily accessible from the navigation menu and place internal links.
• Pay attention to content quality.
• If possible, add links to external resources that will serve as sources of information, such as your employees' social media profiles and blog posts.

To ensure your SEO strategy is effective, use the local rank tracker by SE Ranking to monitor your online presence in a target market. The tool lets you get comprehensive information on local rankings you need to adjust your marketing strategy. That way, you can be sure potential candidates will find your brand in the search results. If you are a SaaS business, consider partnering with a SaaS SEO agency to enhance your SEO efforts further and maximize your visibility in local search results.

2. Social media platforms

Be sure to add employee testimonials to your corporate page. You may frame them as a story about company values, a portrait of your best employee, or a snapshot of a typical workday.

Don't limit yourself to the corporate page, however. Make sure you post positive feedback about your company on popular job search and career-building platforms. Motivate employees to talk about the company in personal posts and share them with their followers.

You can also engage influencers in this task. Take a virtual tour with a niche celebrity to increase your rating among your target audience. The main thing is not exaggerating or turning the video into a blatant advertisement.

3. Hiring and recruiting platforms

A smart tactic would be to create branded pages on such portals. You might as well have to buy a paid subscription. But in reality, this solution will help you significantly reduce your recruiting costs in the future.

Most recruiting platforms suggest that the company create a separate "Why us?" tab. This would be an ideal place to post a short testimonial, quote, or link to a blog post if the portal rules allow it.

4. Publications about your industry

To promote your business online, you can constantly monitor industry-specific publications, news portals, and other similar resources. You can do this with the help of specialized link-building tools — the SE Ranking service we mentioned above has a similar tool.

Contact the authors of articles or site administrators. Find out under what terms you can publish a guest post or become a ranking member. For your material to be popular and useful, be sure to fill it with interesting content, and don't forget to include an employee review.

Try to avoid blatantly advertising posts, even if you use the site to post a sponsored article. When posting information about the company, include neutral, general information without over-emphasizing positive attributes.

5. Events and presentations

Be sure to attend job fairs, industry conferences, and trade shows. Include employee testimonials in your presentation materials by providing short quotes, preferably with employee photos. You can also create comprehensive job testimonials, motivating applicants to submit their resumes for the most important job openings.

Don't forget online events, which have become especially popular in the era of the coronavirus quarantine. You can even mention the positive aspects of your HR policy in presentations about workflow organization or new product development. The main thing is to do it naturally so as not to annoy the audience.

Another interesting approach is to let a great employee talk about the benefits of the company instead of you. Send them to conferences, seminars, and professional development courses. Use the power of "word-of-mouth marketing," which often works better than traditional techniques.

5 Interesting examples of employee testimonials

You can talk endlessly about theory, but only a practical testimonial example will help demonstrate the power of working with them. We've collected five samples that will serve as inspiration for your HR policy.

1. Kraftvaerk

A technology consulting company created an impressive video overview of their employees' daily lives. Its main idea is to show a reasonable balance between work and personal time, as well as to demonstrate team cohesion and a high level of support for each person. The video underlines their policy of multiculturalism and shows that every employee can reach the top of the career ladder. The multimedia block is complemented by a short article detailing the team environment.

2. Procter and Gamble

The well-known corporation, which produces household chemicals, emphasizes promoting leaders. Its testimonials page showcases examples of people who have built careers from the ground up, reaching leadership positions — all the way up to the director. Each box consists of three elements: an employee's photo, a quote from their testimonial, and a short text description. The page looks very simple and minimalist and, therefore, helps draw attention to the key points.

3. SHAREit

The developer of this cross-platform file-sharing application chose an alternative strategy. He bet on the promotion of his personnel policy on social networks, specifically on Instagram. The reviews look similar to those used by P&G — the image has a photo of the employee and a quote, and the description is in the text part. The main difference is that all the posts are designed in a corporate style that includes colors, fonts, and even the shapes of text blocks.

4. American Express

The financial corporation tries to deflect attention from the serious nature of its business by filling its testimonials page with bright, colorful photos. They show employees' lives outside the office — walks, amusement parks, spending time with family, and so on. The company shows by its own example that the team is more than a group of people united by a common profession.

5. Volvo

One of Europe's largest engineering companies keeps a kind of magazine where it shares employees' stories. They aren't necessarily stories of dizzying rises and glittering careers — many of the employees simply talk about how happy they are to be where they are and to be part of a close-knit team. This approach is very effective because it is far from blatant advertising — the material is presented naturally without exaggerating the merits of the corporation.

Conclusion: Show everyone the inner world of your business!

One of the most promising areas of investment is human capital, and the emergence of tools that automate routine work only emphasizes its value. If you want to achieve success tomorrow, you should assemble a team of qualified specialists today.

And to do that, you need to work on your brand reputation, both with your customers and with the job seekers who are considering your resume. Demonstrate to them that your company will be the place where they can get everything they want, including a comfortable work environment, career opportunities, and incentives.

One of the key tools for promoting your business in the job market is employee testimonials. By using them competently on your website, social media, specialized platforms, and marketing materials, you can become a rising recruiting star, outperforming your competitors to find the best of the best candidates.