With employee satisfaction becoming even more transparent through the use of websites such as Glassdoor, how does it translate to customer satisfaction?
Glassdoor is an online career community helping people find jobs they love and companies hire top talent. More than 22 million members from across 190 countries visit Glassdoor to see the latest jobs, and access and contribute to the six million employee-provided company reviews, salary reports, interview reviews and office photos.
Essentially, Glassdoor helps people to see who is hiring, what it’s like to work there and who they know at a given company.
How Does Glassdoor Benefit Employers?
Lisa Holden, Glassdoor employer engagement manager says the service also has a number of benefits for employers.
‘Glassdoor helps companies to showcase their employer brand and advertise their jobs to the highly qualified candidates researching them on Glassdoor. Currently, more than 1,200 employers are partnered with Glassdoor to get their story and jobs out to job seekers,’ Holden said.
To ensure the information doesn’t misrepresent companies, every company review, salary report, interview review and office photo (also known as user-generate content) contributed to Glassdoor goes through a multi-tier review process, including both technological and human review.
Every piece of user-generated content must meet the Glassdoor Community Guidelines before it is published to the site. On average, approximately 15% of content submitted to Glassdoor is rejected as it does not meet our community guidelines,’ explained Holden.
It has been widely demonstrated that a positive relationship exists between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction, but the challenge for companies is how they achieve and maintain this relationship.
Glassdoor recently announced the ‘50 Best Medium-Sized Companies to Work For’, in its Employees Choice Awards 2014, as voted for by the employees themselves. Employees working in the top five companies highlighted ‘approachable co-workers and senior management’, ‘flexibility’, ‘great benefits’ and ‘fun, creative work environments’ as reasons for great reviews of a company. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), also conducts an annual survey on the satisfaction of U.S employees. Its latest results ranked opportunities to use skills, job security, compensation/pay, communication with co-workers and relationships with immediate supervisors as the top five contributors to employee satisfaction.
Keeping Employees Satisfied vs. Keeping Customers Satisfied
Not surprisingly, many of the measures that keep employees satisfied are identical to the measures required to keep customers satisfied too. Good communication, strong relationships, flexibility and benefits are all qualities customers value within a company too. It seems that creating a ‘pay-it-forward’ culture within companies, that starts with senior management and does not stop until it reaches the customers, can only be beneficial for both employee and customer satisfaction.
Ensuring that the excellent culture within a company does get paid forward and exudes from its frontline also relies on the alignment of employees in roles that match their skill, ability and creativity.
Glassdoor employee reviews do have similar trends, as noted above, but you can also find many differences too. What pleases one person, may not please another and the expression ‘you can’t put a round peg in a square hole’ springs to mind. It is therefore vital for companies to place people in roles that match their skills, ability and creativity. This can only be done by forging excellent relationships with employees, creating many communication pathways and providing flexibility within a role. An employee who has had all these needs met by senior staff and co-workers is highly likely to ‘pay-it-forward’ and ensure the customers they deal with get the same, great service.
Results from SHRM, delves further into the tools employees at the frontline require to be satisfied and in turn satisfy their customers. They include; excellent interpersonal skills, correct tools, internal customer-service to support them, appraisal systems, achievable goals and excellent role models within the company.
With these tools and the good vibes that come from working in a role that suits you, rewards you and changes with you, it is easy for employees to create customer experiences that will having them shouting from the rooftops and coming back for more!
What’s more, with websites such as Glassdoor making employee satisfaction within a company even more transparent it is not hard to keep a track on what factors are working within a company to keep employees happy and try them out for yourself.
So, how does Glassdoor actually work?
How is the website monitored?
Every company review, salary report, interview review and office photo (also known as user-generate content) contributed to Glassdoor goes through a multi-tier review process that includes both technological and human review. Every piece of user-generated content must meet the Glassdoor Community Guidelines before it is published to the site. On average, approximately 15% of content submitted to Glassdoor is rejected as it does not meet our community guidelines.
How does Glassdoor encourage company executives to get involved with the website?
Glassdoor gives job seekers, employees and employers a level playing field in which to talk about important workplace topics. There are a few key ways employers can get involved on Glassdoor. First, executives, HR professional, recruiters and others managing a company’s reputation should sign up for a Free Employer Account – the account gives companies the ability to respond to their company’s reviews, add basic information to their profile, and get free company-specific analytics that helps them track job seeker engagement and their brand reputation. Beyond that, Glassdoor also offers a suite of Talent Solutions including Enhanced Profiles and Job Ads as well as richer analytics.