Many years ago when I first started running training and workshops in the field of employee engagement, I would talk about Glassdoor. Back in 2009 very few people had heard of it. As I explained the concept, phones would be whipped out of bags to see if their company was on there, and what the verdict was on their culture and CEO. The reactions were often emotional, and always interesting – anger that this could be allowed, defensiveness when the reviews weren’t as they’d hoped, sometimes relief if the opposite was true. I had high hopes for Glassdoor. I thought it would help convince sceptical stakeholders that they needed to take employee engagement seriously or face the consequences. Unfortunately this was not quite the case.
It always struck me as odd that companies would pay large sums to appear on top 100 lists and yet avoided just doing the right things with their people and getting a high Glassdoor rating as an outcome.
Sites such as Glassdoor are increasingly used by employees when choosing which jobs to apply for, and more importantly, deciding which company they want to work for. In addition, a study conducted by Norwich business school in 2018 uncovered a link between Glassdoor ratings and performance:
“First, we find that UK firms rated highly by their current employees in terms of satisfaction achieve superior profitability (ROA) compared to those rated poorly. Second, the significant positive relationship between employee satisfaction rating and profitability indicates that similarly to the case of US firms, online employee reviews can be used to forecast the financial results of UK firms.”
More and more companies, such as Unilever and Nandos, now actively use their Glassdoor ratings, and profiles, as part of their marketing, not only for potential employees, but for investors too.
Organisations are also coming increasingly under fire for the way they treat, or mistreat employees. During the Covid-19 lockdown there were a number of high profile brands who attracted the wrong kind of column inches because of the appalling experience of their employees. One such example came from ex employees of BrewDog, who penned, and shared, an open letter, detailing their negative experiences working at the company.
The letter included allegations of a toxic company culture, and the subsequent impact on employees’ mental health. Employees claimed that they felt “burnt out, afraid and miserable”, in response to a culture of fear. The letter makes compelling reading and does not portray BrewDog as a place you’d love to work. The fact that the letter was initially countersigned by over 60 ex and current employees, rising to over 250, adds credibility to the claims made.
James Watt, Chief Executive of BrewDog responded to these claims on Twitter, stating:
“At BrewDog we are focussed on building the best business we can, which is why the open letter we saw on Twitter was so upsetting, but so important. Our focus now is not on contradicting or contesting the details of that letter, but to listen, learn and act.
As a fast-growing business, we have always tried to do the best by our team – we do have thousands of employees with positive stories to tell as a result. But the tweet we saw last night proves on many occasions, we haven’t got it right. We are committed to doing better, not just as a reaction to this, but always; and we are going to reach out to our entire team – past and present to learn more. But, most of all, right now, we are sorry.”
Time will tell if this treatment of their employees impacts consumer behaviour, but this could have been a very different story, with a much happier outcome. The evidence is compelling, when you get it right with you people, it positively impacts pretty much every business outcome you could hope for.
When you get it right with your people everyone wins – your employees, your business, your customers, your profit and more. So why not just do the right thing in the first place? Why wait until you have poor survey scores or a PR disaster to decide to treat your people in the right way?
I live in hope that we are turning the corner, and finally organisations are waking up to the fact that treating employees well, designing great experiences, and focusing on engagement, are good news for all.
I’d love to hear what you think?
@Emma
