Have you ever wanted to leave a review about your employer and see how well employees are compensated? Well, Glassdoor attempts to offer a crowd-sourced level of transparency to companies, their salaries for positions, employee reviews and the ranking of the overall leadership. I checked it out, I love it.
Glassdoor demonstrates that moderated social media is possible. In my experience when submitting a review, they hand-check it for editorial and make sure there’s nothing libelous. I appreciate the transparency that the Web site gives to prospective employees and proverbially flips the tables on “background-checks.”
Increasingly, many employees are fearful (or ignorant thereof) of saying the wrong thing on the Internet and becoming Dooced, now employers have something to lose when they go off course and create stress for employees. I imagine that outside of the fact that employees can research an employer that a company’s Human Resources and Public Relations teams could leverage the feedback obtained on Glassdoor. I’ve never seen a company every publicly publish their employee satisfaction surveys, surveys that are supposed to improve the morale and the operations of a company. Perhaps, Glassdoor can start to change that tradition.
Example:
If my company is at a 50% satisfaction rating, and in one quarter we improve it to 75%, that is an unbiased way to track success at improving employee morale and likely, productivity. If you reasonably react to a critical review on your company and take steps to address the root causes of the problem, you are performing good deeds for Human Resources. Then let’s say you turn things around to an astounding 90%+ employee satisfaction, now you have something you can toss to your Public Relations team to publish in a release — and a new metric to include on career-finding materials.
I was initially attracted to Glassdoor by a very engaging advertisement on Facebook with my employer’s name on it. I think it was effective, hence, I followed through and converted.
As a startup I see a lot of potential for rapid growth. I can definitely see the company offering consulting services and even monetize more data for employers. I can also vision a partnership with LinkedIn to use an API when hooking up a company with raw-data reviews. The only direction my compass points for Glassdoor is Northeast.
[Reminded to write about Glassdoor via CNet NewsBlog]
