Originally written by Jonathan Richards on Small Business
Turn over any newspaper and you won’t be surprised to see yet another corporate scandal, or an accusation that a company’s culture is “toxic”. It seems the outrage is arriving thicker and faster than ever.
Smaller businesses may feel far removed from the outrageous stories in the news, yet there’s a significant connection. Even organisations that would never dominate the national or global news agenda need to recognise that problems in their internal culture can and will surface online.
Toxic cultures no longer need to be reported by lone whistle-blowers, or even undercover journalists — the reality inside British SMEs is being openly shared on the web. Renewable energy supplier Bulb recently found this out the hard way, when the Telegraph reported on “growing signs of employee discontent” and complaints of a “toxic work culture” based on the firm’s Glassdoor score, a website where staff can anonymously review their employers.
Glassdoor is certainly influential: it gets 67m unique visitors each month and hosts 49m reviews of nearly 1m companies worldwide.
Most business owners are already aware of how much online reviews can affect their ability to recruit and retain talent. Glassdoor itself suggests that 70pc of people