Glassdoor: What Your Employees Think of You

Glassdoor, a social website that lets employees rate and rank previous and current jobs, approval rating of your CEO (much like the presidential approval ratings) as well as share salaries, is slowly getting traction. I login every few weeks to see slow steady growth. If you’re in a management position or are in HR, I highly recommend you read the reviews and ratings that your employees are saying.

If you notice decision, and see a trend of similar complaints, there’s two things to realize: 1) Your internal feedback loop is probably not working, therefore employees are letting grievances air in public to customers, investors, and the board. 2) There are probably some issues that you may want to resolve and fix.

There are a few weaknesses with Glassdoor that we should take into account: 1) There’s still very little data, most companies just have a smattering of reviews, 2) All data is anonymous so it’s very difficult to track –or prove –that someone actually worked at the company. It would be interesting if they were able to anonymously approve accounts in LinkedIn thereby secretly verifying identities. 3) Unhappy employees and happy employees will reflect their attitude –and service– to customers, so be sure to acknowledge one of your most important assets.

Also, if a company is just getting smeared by it’s employees, a company should address these problems, as although you could block the site from work, people will access it at home.

For what it’s worth, I’m making it a rule not to publicly rate my current employer on these types of sites, although I’m likely to rate them after I move on. Instead, I’m more likely to be forth coming in internal discussions, in an effort to improve things, rather that say it in public.

As we move to new jobs, we’ll be looking at the reviews of future companies on Glassdoor (just as we review financials) before I accept a position, but will appropriately weight it depending on age of comments, number of total reviewers, and patterns for trends.

Although Glassdoor shows some data in public, if you’re curious to see what employees think of your company (or how much people make in other companies) you’ll have to register, and complete part of the submission process in order to see details.

Have you peered into the glassdoor? Were you surprised or did you get confirmation?