I have been getting a lot of questions about Glassdoor, a website where you can search for a company and find all of the essential information about it without having to talk to someone from the company in person. When searching a company on Glassdoor you can find salary information, details about the corporate culture, how employees feel about working there, and much more.
So, what is my opinion about this website? I think it is a great resource and I think that the information is reliable. I really believe that this site is the best data source that is publicly available that allows people outside of a company to be able to look in and see what the company is all about. In fact, I have used this site in my own research for my new book. I used Glassdoor to look into and analyze over 250 companies based on how good they are at providing experiences for their employees.
One argument against Glassdoor is that some people feel that the information on the site is biased. They feel that the only employees who are going to review the company are the ones who have extreme feelings, good or bad, about the company; therefore the reviews are either really angry employees venting about their problems or really happy employees building up the company based on their unique experience. I don’t think this argument is 100% valid. If a company on Glassdoor has hundreds or thousands of reviews, which a lot of them do, it is highly unlikely that you have that many people who are leaving inaccurate reviews.
Now, am I saying this site is perfect? Of course not. But it you look at the information as a big picture and look at what the majority of people are saying about a company I believe it gives an accurate look into companies. I will say that if a large company with thousands of employees and they only have 10 reviews, then yes, maybe you aren’t seeing an accurate look inside the company. But as a whole I think the site is helpful and reliable.
I also think that this site is helpful for companies themselves to look at. Especially if your company has a large amount of employees leaving reviews and ratings, I think that this site can help companies be aware of how they being perceived.
I think Glassdoor is just the beginning of transparency in the workplace. I think in the future you will see transparency into not just the company as a whole, but also into people who work there. I am seeing companies explore and move towards being more and more transparent and I believe that in the future you will be able to see ratings and reviews for different divisions and departments in a company.
Have you ever used Glassdoor? Do you think it is a reliable resource? Use #AskTheFuturist on Twitter to share your thoughts. You can also use the hashtag to ask me a question for a future episode.
Let me know what you think, comment below to share your thoughts! You can subscribe to the YouTube channel for more videos.
Jacob Morgan is a keynote speaker, author, and futurist. You can invite Jacob to keynote your next conference, subscribe to his videos on Youtube, check our his podcast, or subscribe to his newsletter!
Comments