Why Grand Rounds Aims for Best Places to Work

“How do you explain the negative Glassdoor reviews?” I received this question a few years and a couple companies ago, while interviewing a data science candidate. She was a sought-after candidate in a low supply/high demand field who we very much wanted to come on board. (She didn’t.) It was the first time I’d heard of Glassdoor and it cemented my appreciation for how job seekers – not to mention customers, investors, reporters and other major stakeholders – use the tool to get an inside look at what makes a company tick. This appreciation was further solidified last year when my then-employer, Evolent Health, made the Glassdoor Best Places to Work list. And again when Grand Rounds, my current company, landed at number two for 2016. Go after it. If you want to make the Glassdoor Best Places to Work list, decide it’s a priority and move in the direction of achieving it. But not for the external recognition – that’s just a bonus. If your product’s appeal to your customer target was murky, surely you’d seek more information. If you gained insight on how to drive more customer loyalty, certainly you’d move in haste. The data is the thing. Whether or not you make the list, you’ll move closer to the end-all – employees who think you deserve to be there. Like most everything, landing on Glassdoor's Best Places to Work list is both a quantity and quality challenge. Do you earn enough ratings and reviews to offer a representative sample? Do you reflect an organization that the discerning candidate would eagerly join?

Be what you want to see. Let’s take the second part, the much harder of the two, first. To be sure, this won’t be a comprehensive instructional on how to create an ideal work environment. If your company is consistently graded a C, chances are the challenge and opportunity at hand go well beyond what a blog post might address. Disclaimer aside, here are a few ideas to ensure your Glassdoor presence is indicative of a Best Place to Work:

• Do ask for feedback. A lot. Employees don’t want perfection. They want to be heard and to see that their ideas and suggestions can drive impact. Issue an engagement survey at least once a year. Share what you find openly with the team. Create a process for discussion and action planning (that involves everyone) against the results. Make it just one of many formal and informal forums that allow feedback to freely move in all directions.
• Don’t assume corporate values are passé. Sure, corporate values have become as ubiquitous as the mission statement. But if you haven’t already or if your previous efforts stopped short, move to (re)establish tenets that explicitly define what you stand for. Avoid table-stakes values, and use language that you and your employees can personally attach to. A great place for inspiration – employee-employee award submissions. What behaviors are being celebrated? How are these behaviors described?
• Do get out there. You probably have clearly defined projects and plans for executive visibility at conferences, etc. What about internally? At Grand Rounds, our CEO hosts a group welcome lunch for each quarter’s new hire “class.” On the agenda: what are your early impressions and how can we do better? Our head of team development regularly checks the organizational pulse via 1:1 walks. Evolent’s CEO hand-writes and hand-delivers frequent thank you notes.
• Do go beyond typical team-building. No doubt, encouraging a social work environment is hugely important. Just last week, we hosted Falsetto Friday, which was as wonderfully obscure and fun as it sounds. But if you want to get at the heart of thorny, top-of-mind matters, hold workouts around individual or company-wide issues. Do the proverbial ropes course along with the literal one.
• Don’t treat it as extra credit. When time is at a premium (and isn’t it always?), resist the temptation to ramp down your investment in employee engagement or to assume it will take care of itself. We consider every employee a member of our marketing team, with every customer interaction an opportunity to build (or erode) our brand. So there’s no separating employee relations from the top and bottom line. The thank-you writing CEO insists that in management meetings, checking in on culture gets equal airtime to checking in on sales.

Volume for veracity’s sake. The Glassdoor team wants to know your ratings and reviews are accurately representative. And so do you, right? Below are some tips to drive substantive Glassdoor activity.

• Do ask for reviews, and show you’re listening. Let’s start with the obvious. You’re not going to get more reviews if you aren’t actively seeking more reviews. Underscore the spirit of the ask: always about learning, improving...never about “mandatory.” Respond to the reviews (via Glassdoor) as an unambiguous sign you value the feedback. Our CEO regularly answers reviews (and not with a form letter!).
• Don’t be afraid of outliers. Yes, more reviews mean increased likelihood of harder-to-hear feedback. First, it’s better to know. You can’t solve a problem you’re not aware of. Second, having a handful of reviews at either tail serves your profile’s credibility. Who isn’t skeptical of the Amazon.com product with a small number of reviews, all glowing?
• Do walk the walk. If you’ve ever participated in a fundraising drive, you know the first step is to make a contribution yourself. Write a review. See if the management team is willing to share. Then ask them to encourage others. Your asks and theirs will be more genuine for it. And visitors to Glassdoor (including would-be reviewers) will see senior executives took the time to offer input.
• Don’t miss an opportunity to show it’s taken seriously. Work Glassdoor data into your company-wide meetings. It will encourage posting, and show that you care about and heed employee feedback. In relaying a new focus on work-life balance for example, show a review excerpt that illustrates team sentiment, along with your rating on this dimension over time, to back up why you’ve deemed it a focus area.
• Do tack asks onto milestones. As you celebrate employee work anniversaries, ask them to reflect on their last year’s experience via a Glassdoor review. As with all such asks, make it clear you’re keen on their candid feedback on what’s going well, and what could be better. And group the requests – one email to all November anniversaries, e.g., to further assure anonymity. 

Never call the job “done.” If you aspire to make the cut – and I hope you will – make the process the goal, landing on the list a metric (one of many). As trite as it might sound, this is very much an “it’s not the destination, it’s the journey” task. If you make the list, you’ll enjoy the resulting visibility. No matter what, and most importantly, you’ll gain invaluable insight into how you’re doing in attracting, retaining and engaging talent. And because you’re dialed in, you’ll inevitably improve across the dimensions that make a workplace “sticky.” Which brings me to one last suggestion: make it a goal every year. Even if, especially if, you just made the list. I’m happy to continue this conversation at linkedin.com/in/egerstung.