How to Improve Your Glassdoor Rating
At the start of this 12 months, Fresh Tracks Canada had a 2.1 (out of 5) score on the nameless evaluate website Glassdoor, that means most workers reported feeling “dissatisfied” working on the firm. By late November, the Vancouver-based tour operator had improved it to 4.6, changing into the top-rated Canadian journey firm on the employer-rating platform.
How did they do it? By treating their Glassdoor score not as an remoted drawback to be solved, however a symptom of deeper points that wanted to be tackled head on. “For me, it was more about a need for a cultural transformation,” says Sushant Trivedi, Fresh Tracks Canada’s CEO. “The Glassdoor rating was just a reflection of that.”
Trivedi, who got here onboard in January, first got here throughout the detrimental evaluations when he visited the corporate’s Glassdoor web page himself, doing the everyday due diligence many people do once we’re entertaining a job provide. A publish from June 2021 mentioned “Even after expressing severe burn out, nothing was done to support those who have worked so hard on keeping the company alive in a pandemic.” (It was accompanied by a 1 star score, the bottom you may give.) Another, posted a month earlier, warned “stay away” and blamed administration for “doing a good job of ensuring the company is non-existent by December.”
“Travel is inherently a human business, and FreshTracks prides itself on being a human-centric company—but it was evident that what was being serviced to the outside world wasn’t being serviced inside the organization,” says Trivedi. Employees have been feeling overworked and unappreciated.
When Trivedi joined the corporate, Fresh Tracks was rising from what he calls “the existential crisis of Covid.” Restrictions and closures meant bookings have been down by 50 per cent, and because of this Fresh Books needed to cut back their headcount by about 40 per cent. Trivedi introduced on assist to show issues round post-pandemic and knew that these Glassdoor scores and feedback can be essential information factors as he labored to remodel the corporate’s tradition into a spot the place each worker felt like that they had an impression on the corporate’s success.
It was no small process. One of the primary adjustments was easy however significant: He renamed the “people and culture” division to “people operations” so as to create a larger sense of collective accountability for tradition inside the firm. “I don’t believe culture should rest in the hands of one individual or team,” says Trivedi. So he flattened the management construction, and moved autonomy over selections and budgets right down to particular person groups to handle. “Rather than top-down, I made it a bottom-up company,” he says. “Everyone now has more empowerment and a greater sense of ownership.” This, he says, has helped bridge a perceived distance between management and workers on the bottom—mirrored in the truth that “management” hasn’t been referred to as out negatively on Glassdoor because the adjustments have been made.
Key to all of that is what Trivedi calls “creating an environment of psychological safety,” which implies creating the form of place the place an worker can name out the great and the unhealthy with out worry of repercussion, and with a way that it’s really going to be taken critically. The summer season was a chaotic time to be in journey—pent-up demand, delays all over the place, an acute labour scarcity—and it was difficult, to say the least, for Fresh Tracks’ groups to navigate. So Trivedi made certain that each assembly included time for him to ask “what does help look like?” so he may present sensible options to no matter workers have been battling. “Every Thursday, the operations team and I sat and ate lunch together, taking the time to connect and chat through pain points,” he says. “And that collaboration actually wound up contributing to a double-digits increase in repeat business compared to pre-pandemic levels.”
While there are all types of guides on the Internet about easy methods to enhance your Glassdoor score, touting hacks like asking your workers to depart good evaluations to re-balance the score algorithm, Trivedi by no means as soon as entertained these. “With the amount of effort it takes to go and convince someone to write a review, you could take that time, energy and resources to understand the problems and collectively find solutions,” he says. “You will actually drive organizational results, and the Glassdoor numbers will follow.”
And whereas the detrimental evaluations can really feel like they’re an important, Trivedi believes the optimistic evaluations will be simply as helpful. “Sometimes figuring out what you’re doing well, and doubling down on that, has a far greater impact than being obsessed with solving problems,” he says. “Because we were able to monitor, learn and act, it really helped us to start a positive flywheel.”
And it was ahead momentum that benefited extra than simply their Glassdoor score. This 12 months, Fresh Tracks grew from 50 to 100 workers and, thanks partially to its tradition of open communication and collaborative teamwork, didn’t battle with hiring like many different firms. They’ve booked their highest variety of travellers ever this 12 months, and are on observe for report income in 2022.
“Anyone who looks at employee health and happiness as an independent part of the business will never find sustainable growth,” concludes Trivedi. “Making Fresh Tracks a rewarding place to work is part of our corporate strategy. It’s inherently baked into every single thing.”
