Glassdoor and your future talent strategy

Glassdoor.com has 45 Million users and over 40 Million monthly visits. The average rating of a company on Glassdoor is 3.3 out of 5. The average CEO Approval rate on Glassdoor is 66%.

The percentage of Fortune 500 businesses on Glassdoor is 39%. Amongst many other major careers and employer sites, Glassdoor is the go to place for internal company reviews from the employee (reviews/pro's, cons, advice and ratings) or potential employee perspective (measured by feedback on interviews).

In this blog I would like to uncover some key stats supporting why I think Glassdoor needs to be an essential part of your Talent Attraction strategy both now and in the future.

I may not identify every part of Glassdoor's features so my apologies if I miss anything (I don't think I have) but here are some key stats that Glassdoor measures and rates:

• Culture and Values
• Work / Life Balance
• Senior Management
• Compensation & Benefits
• Career Opportunities

On the front page of every employer profile you will see:

• Overall company rating out of (5)
• Would an employee or former employee recommend the business to a friend (represented as a percentage out of 100)
• Employee and former employee recommendation of CEO (represented as a percentage out of 100)

Here are my thoughts on why your external communication with prospective employees and relationship with past and ongoing employees should remain positive to create a sustainable talent strategy as the talent landscape continues to challenge conventional strategies and process.

The power of referrals

• Referrals are the #1 source for new hire quality – (source staffing.org)
• Referrals are the #1 in fastest time to hire by an average of over 10 days – (source: Jobvite index)

Opportunity for you as an employer

• Make referrals a part of your culture
• Reward and Recognise - publicly. Introduce referral bonuses for referrals as soon as the referred employee passes probation. Statistically, referral employees are 4 times more like to be with your business in two years (it's worth the investment). As a side benefit you encourage loyalty and increase engagement with the employee that made the referral in the first place. Now more likely to refer more friends and associates and stay with you longer. There are even more benefits such as raising their profile within the business which may lead to further opportunities
• Nearly 60% of all employees express their willingness to participate in employee referral programs

Approval of the CEO

Although when adding an approval rating of your CEO on Glassdoor appears very simplistic, it does highlight the point that an employee's opinion of the strength of CEO represents the whole of the senior management team, not just the CEO. There is no option to rate the leadership team so getting this right is key to the overall rating.

With that in mind, I feel the importance of leadership teams and senior management speaking the same language and communicating the same message across the business is very important and worth note when delivering communication to the business.

Overall Company Rating

Again a simple score out of 5 is measured which sometimes doesn't take a lot of thought. With that in mind, if your talent strategy includes utilising Glassdoor, you might want to discuss what 5/5 looks like and what the value to the business is. If your employees don't know why they are rating your business 5/5 they may low ball you.

Glassdoor is part of your talent strategy, why wouldn't you want to be 5/5?

69% are likely to apply to a job if the employer actively manages its employer brand - source Glassdoor

Here's another blinder of a stat

Approximately 1% of candidates / applicants are hired – (source: Lever 2017 -Inside the Recruiting Funnel: Essential Metrics for Start-ups and SMBs 2017)

If you could double this to just 2% what would the results be for you and your business? Why would you not increase the level of engagement on Glassdoor with that killer stat?!

I hope this blog post gives you an insight into some of the benefits of just oneof the major platforms and tools to use in effective talent management.

There are at least 50 other ways to attract higher quality talent more effectively and I would be happy to discuss these points should you wish to speak. I look forward to your comments and please check out BPS World's Glassdoor reviews here.

For more information on the topics covered in this blog please contact Matt Grady: matt.grady@bps-world.com