Glassdoor's Best Places to Work list turns 15 this year. Since the beginning, it has honored companies who are doing right by their employees - as told to us by employees. You can say it's the People's Choice of employer awards.
If your company wants to join the winners, we have some advice. (FYI, there are no costs to win a Glassdoor award, and you can't nominate your company for consideration. Learn more about the criteria for winning.)
The following offers employers nine ways the winning companies stand out from the crowd and what strategic changes employers can make to be more like Best Places to Work. Plus, we share five business benefits of making the list.
What you can do to become a Best Place to Work
If you're an employer hoping to make the Best Places to Work list, create your company profile and get started with these tips.
- Increase the number of online reviews. Quantity of reviews is the first eligibility factor, so encourage online reviews with the Request Reviews tool at each employees' 90-day, six-month, or yearly anniversaries.
- Monitor and respond to feedback. Set up alerts so that you see reviews coming in and create a plan for how to respond, both internally and on Glassdoor.
- Identify trends in reviews. Leverage Glassdoor's Review Intelligence™ - a powerful analysis tool that lets you unlock insights from employee reviews and understand the "why" behind ratings, surfacing valuable patterns in feedback to inform your employer brand strategy.
- Inform prospective candidates. Make it easy for job seekers to find information on what your company is doing from an employee experience perspective. Candidates aligned with your company's mission and values are more likely to be satisfied employees who share their enthusiasm.
- Learn from past winners and make changes. Look at the key attributes that Best Places to Work winners have in common.
- Build a strong culture. More than any other aspect, culture is mentioned frequently in reviews of BPTW companies. The best leaders see cultivating great company culture as an important part of their strategy for success. Every single employee can play a part in culture, but management sets the tone.
- Focus on employee development. Employee development is one of the most frequently mentioned positives in reviews of Best Places to Work companies. That means everything from career advancement to training and creative professional development opportunities that support each employees' career goals.
- Practice transparency. Most employees want a company that's open about operations, authentic employee communications, and (if possible), transparent about salaries.
- Improve your benefits package. Again and again, Best Places to Work employee reviews mention that a truly comprehensive benefits package attracted them to the company and kept them there. Listen to what your employees have to say about your healthcare plan, time off, and other benefits and make tweaks where you can to be more competitive and drive retention.
5 areas of focus when named a Best Place to Work company
Whether you're a job seeker looking to work at a top company, or an employer looking to increase your chances of making the list next year, here are areas to either watch or improve upon.
- Your Glassdoor profile. Your Glassdoor company profile could receive millions of visits in the days and weeks following the Best Places to Work announcement.
Add information to showcase your company to job seekers and highlight the benefits of working for your company.
- Job postings. Your list of open jobs will get heightened interest, which broadens your candidate pool and allows you to choose the highest-performing, best-fit candidates. Make sure your job postings are up-to-date, and consider whether any contain language that may turn off job seekers.
- Positive PR. The BPTW list garners incredible news coverage, and your company will ride that wave. This is an opportunity to share your brand promise as an employer and the steps you take to fulfilling it.
- Word-of-mouth reputation. Your company's public reputation is the first impression you make on job seekers, and our data shows that it's an important driver in whether they recommend your company. With management and employee engagement as other big drivers, employee experience is at the center of whether employees will stay or leave.
- Improved recruiting. Take advantage of a brand new, powerful opportunity to revise your recruitment programs. How your talent experiences your company, from the first recruitment outreach to the day-to-day at your company, determines the impact and legitimacy of your employer brand.
The best employer brands are built organically and authentically by people, not artificially through formal processes or top-down by executives. That's why it's so important to build your employer brand by treating your people well, ensuring a widespread feeling of belonging, and listening to and learning from real feedback in Glassdoor reviews. It's only then that the genuine story about your workplace - told by the people who know it best - will serve to draw more great people, diverse perspectives, and innovation to your company.
Explore the 2023 Best Places to Work list to learn more about the winning companies.
