New BSI standard will help trust in recruiter reviews

The British Standards Institute (BSI) has published new guidance for organisations who use online review platforms, including recruitment agency and workplace review sites.

The voluntary international standard, known as ISO 20488, sets out guidance for review administrators in the collection, moderation and publication of online consumer reviews.

It aims to specifically address the issue of misleading consumer reviews by:

  • requiring those posting reviews to verify they come from genuine consumers
  • requiring retailers to provide contact details for those reviewing their products or services, as well as ensuring reviews reflect the balance of comments received
  • ensuring information is stored confidentially in accordance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 
  • allowing anonymous reviews so long as contact details are available to check reviews are genuine.

The standard is backed by international consumer organisations such as ANEC, the European consumer voice in standardisation, as well as review platforms including Bazaarvoice, and Feefo and Trustpilot, whose platforms contains recruitment agency reviews.

Commenting on the new standard, Rob Nicklin, recruitment industry lead at Feefo, told Recruiter the new standard would help increase consumer trust and protect suppliers from exploitation.

Drawing on Feefo’s research that shows 94% of people check reviews on platforms before making purchases, Nicklin added consumers are becoming ever aware of the authenticity of reviews, with 89% expressing concerns about fake reviews making it harder for consumers to make informed buying decisions.

“Feefo has been working hard to ensure that only genuine reviews are published on our platform by inviting real customers to leave feedback,” Nicklin said.

“The business built its review model with both the consumer and business in mind, ensuring Feefo protects its clients from inaccurate or fraudulent reviews, and helping the consumer make an informed decision. For these reasons Feefo has contributed towards and fully support the newly published ISO standard.

“We are constantly seeing phenomenal progress in many sectors where improvements to customer experience is driving significant business benefit. This is especially true in the recruitment sector where reviews are increasingly relied upon by agencies, clients and candidates alike. We are working with a growing number of recruitment companies including Michael Page, Manpower and REC [Recruitment & Employment Confederation], to help eradicate the practice of fake reviews, so that candidates have access to real information and can select an appropriate recruiter and company to work for.”

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