Why You Should Use Glassdoor to Understand & Improve the Employee Experience Glassdoor for Employers
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Why You Should Use Glassdoor to Understand & Improve the Employee Experience

I often get asked what's Glassdoor? My response. It's like a TripAdvisor for companies, with the added bonus of applying for jobs too. Why's it important? Think about it, would you book your hotel or restaurant without checking reviews on TripAdvisor first? Probably not.

Glassdoor provides a platform for your employees to leave reviews about the experience of working at your company, so it's important to acknowledge them all. Yes, all of them: good, bad or ugly. Whether you agree or not, it's valuable feedback and impacts how you’re seen as a place to work. That's why managing your Glassdoor page is vital to maintaining and understanding your employer brand, and if it’s left unmanaged, can give the impression you don’t care about what your employees have to say.

At Sky, we recognise the platform's value and wanted to partner with Glassdoor to manage how we’re seen as a place to work but also use it as a tool to better understand our people’s experience. Unlike our other social channels, Glassdoor has a different purpose. Instead of being a source where curated content is pushed out, it draws employees to leave reviews about their work life experience; from describing what they love or dislike to giving recommendations to management and also sharing salary information. As a result, it was vital to develop a strategy that made the most of what Glassdoor had to offer; going from creating awareness to influencing business change. We know it'll be a phased approach and are very much at the beginning of that journey.

As a result, we’ve been focused on driving awareness internally and externally. Externally through our social channels, quoting positive reviews and internally by sharing the value of Glassdoor for business areas with hard to fill roles. It’s only the beginning and we've already seen positive results each quarter, with our most recent figures showing: over 50% increase in page views, 30% increase in followers and over the last year 23% more people visiting our careers site from Glassdoor. Ultimately, we're proud to be working towards a better Sky because no company is perfect. But what makes us unique are the number of individuals and initiatives, like our employee networks and the Forum, continually working towards our main goal: to make Sky a better place to work; which makes me proud to work here.

Starting your own journey with Glassdoor? It can feel like a daunting task, so below are a few tips to kick-start your strategy and stand out from your competitors:

  • Educate your teams: Drive awareness of the importance of Glassdoor so stakeholders can understand why they should invest. For example, you’ll be surprised at the number of people who visit your Glassdoor profile before applying for jobs.
  • Check out your score and what your people are saying: Log into Glassdoor as a user and see what your people are saying about working at your company. This will give you an idea of how you’ll need to build your strategy based on what you’re trying to achieve.
  • Speak to Glassdoor: Set up a meeting to understand more about what the Glassdoor package can offer. For example, the data you’ll receive will help you to understand what your people want.
  • Build your strategy: Once you’ve understood your own business requirements and also what Glassdoor can offer, build a strategy that answers these questions. A key tip is to be authentic and encourage reviews in a natural way. It also speaks volumes if key business stakeholders are involved in responding to reviews.
  • Stand out from your competitors: Take a moment to speak to employees in different business areas to understand what they love about working at your company. You’ll soon see a trend and that’ll become your unique message to stand out from competitors.

Whatever your approach it’s clear Glassdoor is going to be critical to that journey.

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Harpreet Nandha is an Employer Branding Specialist at Sky. This article was originally published on LinkedIn Pulse. Reprinted with permission.