While there is a lot of chatter about layoffs in the tech sector, the employment market is still tight, and companies are facing ongoing challenges with recruiting and retention. Current and prospective employees want and expect a broad range of attributes of an employer, beyond the basics of pay and benefits.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is one area that is becoming a larger priority for employers. Recent research from QuestionPro pointed to DEI performance being tied to retention and talent acquisition. In that data, only 60% were satisfied with DEI efforts at their company and 37% of all workers say they would switch jobs to be part of a more inclusive culture. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of U.S. workers in a recent Indeed & Glassdoor survey said that they would consider turning down a job offer or leaving a company if they did not think that their manager (or potential manager) supported DEI initiatives.
Candidates and employees expect transparency on this subject. Glassdoor recently launched its first Equity Xray, which helps bring to light equity issues and gaps by leveraging input from millions of Glassdoor reviews. This research comes a few months after Glassdoor launched advanced search filters, allowing people to customize their job search by workplace factor ratings such as Work/Life Balance, Culture & Values, Diversity & Inclusion and more, or by overall ratings from demographic groups including Race/Ethnicity, Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, and more.
The Equity Xray research examines where employees from distinct demographic groups report substantial differences in workplace experience and satisfaction. By comparing the distribution of company ratings submitted by current employees across both gender identity and race/ethnicity, the Equity Xray pinpoints the companies that are rated equitable in those categories as well as those that have opportunities for improvement.
Within the Equity Xray, employee experiences for 371 unique companies were identified as either equitable or having opportunities for improvement for each of the two dimensions – gender and race/ethnicity. Companies appearing in the Equity Xray must have a minimum of 30 ratings from employees who worked at the company for some period of time over the past year.
According to the data:
- Thirty-nine percent of eligible employers had workplace experience gaps across race/ethnicity groups
- Less than 5% of eligible employers rated equitable across both gender identity and race/ethnicity
- Of the eligible companies, approximately one-fifth (18%) of employers had significantly different workplace experiences between men and women
- At two-thirds of the companies, men rated the company higher on average than women
- The number of companies with opportunities for improvement is small when broken out by industry, but data suggest that the difference between men and women is meaningfully higher than average in retail, tech, and restaurants & food services
“With pay transparency now table stakes for many job seekers, employee experience transparency is the next frontier of how companies are working to ensure that candidate expectations are aligned with the reality they will see once onboard,” says Aaron Terrazas, Glassdoor Chief Economist. “Experience transparency unlocks a virtuous loop of better labor market matches, lower labor churn, and higher worker productivity for companies and the broader economy. An increasingly diverse workforce cares deeply about equity and inclusion, and the Equity Xray is a valuable snapshot into what their demographic peers actually encounter on the job.”
“At Glassdoor, we are deeply committed to workplace transparency, and that includes leveraging our products and resources to help achieve equity in and out of the workplace,” says Danny Guillory, Glassdoor Chief People and Diversity Officer. “By looking under the surface of companies, the Equity Xray™ gives people information that they otherwise would not see. It serves as a purposeful and powerful reminder of the gaps that still exist for companies across all industries in terms of creating an equitable employee experience, where everyone feels welcomed, valued, and positioned for success.”
This type of research in conjunction with enabling the ability for job searchers to identify companies aligned to their expectations in this area demonstrates the importance for companies and EX practitioners to have tools and strategies in place that help to show efforts and successes in this area. This information is important not just for current employees who may be disgruntled with company progress but for potential employees who are seeing positive or negative ratings, and for new employees who have expectations in mind that might not be met. Companies need to have DEI efforts embedded deeply into employee experience. Some ways to support this priority include:
- Having strong feedback and listening programs in place so that companies are not only giving employees a channel to voice their opinion on DEI but have the tools to monitor sentiment on this issue across a variety of channels, including social media and sites like Glassdoor
- Investing in technology that makes closing the loop on employee feedback easy and fast
- Using communication tools to ensure employees are informed of successes in this area or continued challenges; be transparent
- Investigate and support the formation of employee communities and resource groups as a way to forge connections and as a source of feedback and ideas
Author Information
As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.
Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.
