Summary
A former healthcare EB practitioner recounts launching a well-developed EVP while their company's Glassdoor page (3.0 rating, nearly 1,000 reviews) told a consistent, damning story of understaffing and broken promises. The EVP didn't gain traction internally and externally because it couldn't out-shout a public, ongoing record written by the very people it needed to convince.
Key points:
- A researched-backed EVP launched with a backdrop of a Glassdoor page with a 3.0 rating and nearly 1,000 consistent, specific reviews
- Leadership was warned before launch and pushed ahead anyway due to hiring pressure
- The EVP failed to gain traction externally and internally as it didn't stack up well vs. the reviews that had been left
- Advice for employer branders: don't dismiss a poor online reputation as just noise
- Be cautious taking an employer branding role with an employer who doesn't see it as an issue
The Exit Interview is EBN's column for honest practitioner takes, published anonymously. The author is a senior marketing and employer branding professional with more than ten years of experience across large international organisations. Their identity is known to EBN and not shared.
Online reputations matter
I no longer work there, but I spent years building what I thought was a genuinely good EVP for a large healthcare employer. Proper process. Internal and external research, workshops with staff across departments, leadership sign-off at every stage. By most internal measures, we did it right.
I knew our Glassdoor page was bad, we had a 3.0 rating and some pretty unfavourable reviews. We had close to a thousand reviews, so it was clearly an more than one or two unhappy leavers. Anyway, I didn't worry about it too much as I'd be told we'd focus on it at some point, and I always took that at face value.
The reviews themselves bad. Not the usual scattering of bitter one-star rants you find on any every company's page. A consistent, detailed pattern: understaffing, burnout, managers who didn't listen, promises made at hiring then evaporated once people started. Some reviews were old but plenty weren't. And they didn't feel like they weren't written by people who knew each other or coordinated their complaints. They felt like independent accounts converging on the same few points, over and over, in different words.
Your employees know the truth. Does your EVP? At Fathom we measure the "Credibility Gap" between your promise and their reality.
I thought it would be okay. But I was wrong
Anyway, I'd flagged it. I said we should hold the launch, or at least rethink how we framed it, until we had a credible answer to what was sitting in plain sight for anyone who searched our name. Something had to be done. Leadership had a launch date and a lot or hiring was looming, so we pushed on with the EVP.
I've seen EVPs change the hiring game in the past, but not this time. Not externally, because any candidate doing even basic due diligence found that Glassdoor page in under a minute, and it directly contradicted almost everything our messaging was telling them. Not internally either. Our own staff could see the exact same gap between the polished language on the intranet and the reviews accumulating from people describing their actual working conditions. Nobody trusts an EVP that their own colleagues are visibly disputing in public.
What I learnt
Here's what I took from it, and what I think a lot of employer branding people get wrong. We treat employer brand as fundamentally a messaging problem. Get the research right, get the words right, get the visuals right, and the story will land. But if the underlying employee experience is genuinely broken, and people are describing that breakage in specific, credible, ongoing detail in a public forum, no amount of well-researched positioning is going to out-shout it. You are not managing perception at that point, you are trying to overwrite a live record that other people are actively adding to. It doesn't matter how good your campaign is when you are swimming against the tide.
A professional home for employer branding. The Institute of Employer Branding Professionals is being built and you can help shape it.
Looking back, I can see that our EVP was a way of avoiding the actual problem. It's much easier to commission research and run a campaign than it is to walk into a leadership meeting and say the real issue is staffing ratios or management training or broken promises at the point of hire. Employer branding can become a very sophisticated way of not doing that harder work, while still looking like something is being done.
Choose your employer carefully
My advice is this... if you're currently evaluating an employer branding job somewhere with a genuinely poor and specific online reputation, particularly on Glassdoor, don't wave it off as noise from disgruntled ex-employees. Look for the pattern. One or two angry outliers is normal for any company. Dozens of independent, specific, consistent complaints is a red flag.
Then ask about it directly in the interview. Ask what they know about their reputation and what, concretely, they are doing about it. Watch the reaction closely. If they get defensive, or brush it off as unfair, or act like the question itself is somehow inappropriate, that tells you everything. It means either they haven't looked, or they've looked and decided it's not worth fixing. Neither is a good sign for what you'd be walking in to.
But if someone gives you a straight answer, admits it's a real and unresolved problem, and can point to something specific and concrete they're actually doing about it, that's a genuinely different conversation. A bad reputation isn't automatically a reason to run. It can be a opportunity to do great work if the company is mature and honest about it.
I wish I'd known then what I know now. Anyway, I've lived and I've learnt. I'm in a much better place now.
Takeaways
Pattern beats noise
A handful of angry reviews is normal for any employer. Hundreds of independent, specific, consistent complaints describing the same issues is not noise, it's data, and it should be treated as seriously as any internal engagement survey.
Messaging can't outweigh a live public record
Once employees and ex-employees are documenting the same operational failures in real time and in public, no amount of well-researched positioning statements will out-shout it. You're not managing perception at that point, you're competing with an ongoing, credible, growing counter-narrative.
A bad launch can hurt both audiences at once
A mismatched EVP doesn't just fail externally with candidates who do basic due diligence. It fails internally too, because existing staff can see the same gap between the messaging and their day-to-day reality, which erodes trust in the brand from the inside.
Employer branding can become an avoidance mechanism
It's easier to commission research and launch a campaign than to walk into a leadership meeting and name the real issue, whether that's staffing ratios, management training, or promises broken at the point of hire. A campaign can end up looking like action while substituting for it.
How a company responds matters more than the reputation itself
A poor online reputation isn't automatically a reason to avoid a role. Candidates should ask directly what the company knows and what it's doing about it. Defensiveness or dismissal is the real red flag; honesty and a concrete plan can signal a genuine opportunity to do meaningful work.
References
This piece is based on the direct professional experience of the author across multiple large international organisations. No single employer is described or identifiable.
Have something to say that you cannot say on the record? The Exit Interview publishes honest practitioner takes anonymously. No name, no employer, no identifying details. If you have something true to say about employer branding, talent, or recruitment that rarely makes the official version, we want to hear it. Submit your take →
Unnamed CHRO
