Last month, Glassdoor CEO Christian Sutherland-Wong said, “At Glassdoor, we recognize that diversity within our own employee base is essential to the long term success and vitality of our business. To date, we have fallen short.” Today, he followed up saying, “As a next step, we feel it’s important to acknowledge where we are today, share the actions we are taking and hold ourselves accountable to the kind of change we want to see here at Glassdoor and in the world.”
We are tackling this by doing what we do best – promoting transparency, which brings accountability, which leads to change. Today, we are publishing our inaugural Diversity & Inclusion Transparency Report for the first half of 2020. We believe in radical transparency, we advocate for diverse and equitable workplaces, and so we commit to publishing an annual update going forward.
As Glassdoor’s Chief People Officer, I believe this data can be useful to many people, and these groups in particular:
- Job seekers use this information to make more informed job decisions, perhaps to apply to a job here at Glassdoor, or to benchmark our employee data against another company they may be considering.
- More employers share employee demographic data and set goals for a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace to drive meaningful, systemic change.
- Here at Glassdoor, sharing this information will hold us accountable to improve as we remain committed to a diverse and equitable workplace where people feel they belong.
Our People: Today & Tomorrow
Like anything we do, if we measure it, we can improve it. Improving our future starts with understanding where we are today.
Where we are Today*
By Gender
- Glassdoor employs more than 700 employees worldwide, as of July 25, 2020
- 54% of our global employee population are men and 44% are women.
By Race/Ethnicity
- 10% of Glassdoor’s U.S. employee population are among underrepresented racial/ethnic groups (those other than White and Asian).
- 59% of U.S. Glassdoor employees are White, 22% are Asian, 5% are Hispanic or Latino, 4% are Black, 2% identify as two or more races and less than 1% are Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian/Indigenous American/Alaska Native.
- While Glassdoor’s U.S. employee population has strong White and Asian representation, we are underrepresented among the percentage of Black (13.4%) and Latino or Hispanic (18.5%) people in the U.S.
Tech vs. Non-Tech
- 29% of our global employees are in technical roles, while 71% are in non-tech roles.
- Among tech roles, 76% of our global employees are men and 23% are women.
- Among U.S.-based tech roles at Glassdoor, most are currently held by Asian (44%) and White (41%) employees, with lower representation among Black (4%), Hispanic or Latino (4%) and Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian/Indigenous American/Alaska Native (1%) employees.
Leadership
- For the purposes of this report, leadership at Glassdoor is defined as employees in a Director role or higher.
- 63% of our global leaders are men and 37% are women.
- U.S.-based leadership currently consists of White (70%), Asian (16%), Black (3%), Hispanic or Latino (2%) and Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian/Indigenous American/Alaska Native (0%) employee representation.
- Among our senior executive team, 60% are men and 40% are women. 80% are White, 20% are Asian and/or two or more races and 0% are among underrepresented groups (those other than White and Asian).
- Full Data Set: Check out our complete data set to better understand other breakouts related to Glassdoor’s current employee population and demographic data.
Where we Want to be in 2025
Our vision is that our workforce should be reflective of the communities in which we operate and that all employees feel like they belong and are supported at and by Glassdoor.
Our aspirational goal is to have our workforce reflect the population: gender data based on general averages in the countries where we currently have employees, and race/ethnicity data based on the U.S. population. We believe that by welcoming more people, more diversity, we will be better equipped to more intimately understand the needs and wants of job seekers and employers.
So where do we begin? There are many areas we need to work on to improve. But to be successful, we want to focus on the areas where we believe we have the biggest gaps.
By the end of 2025, our aspirational diversity and inclusion goals at Glassdoor are:
- Black employees. 4% of our workforce today is Black. The general population average in the U.S. is 13%, a 9% gap. By the end of 2025, we want to double our current Black representation at Glassdoor to 8%.
- Latinx employees. Today we have a U.S. employee population that is 5% Latinx. As 19% of the general U.S. population is Latinx, by the end of 2025 we want to double our Latinx representation to 10%
- Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian/Indigenous American/Alaska native employees. Today 0.4% of our workforce identifies as belonging to these groups. U.S. representation in these groups is approximately 1.5%. By the end of 2025, we want to more than double our representation to 1% of our employee population.
- Women in Tech: 23% of our tech roles are currently held by women. While an estimated 25% of women today hold tech roles, we want to help bring more women into tech, and so we aspire to have one-third (33%) of our tech roles held by women by the end of 2025.
- Women in Leadership: Today, 37% of our leaders (Director+) are women, but we believe leadership should be more reflective of the U.S. population by gender. That’s why we want women to hold 50% of our leadership roles by the end of 2025.
- Belonging. Currently, 78% of Glassdoor employees report they feel that they belong at Glassdoor. Among tech companies, the benchmark is 73%. By the end of 2025, we believe we can maintain or improve on 78% of employees feeling they belong.
We have plans to collect and report on additional demographics going forward so we can better understand and support even more of our employee population.
These goals are just the beginning.
How We Pay: No Pay Gaps Found in 2020
As we work to improve diversity at Glassdoor, we also want to ensure we pay employees equitably, meaning equal pay for equal work. We are happy to report that in 2020, Glassdoor’s Economic Research Team has found no significant pay gap by gender or by race/ethnicity among Glassdoor employees. Their analysis looks at an apples-to-apples comparison of employees in similar roles with comparable experience and backgrounds.
The findings are consistent with those of previous years – Glassdoor has found no gender pay gap for the fifth consecutive year and no pay gap by race/ethnicity in the two years we’ve evaluated this metric. Read more about the research. And, for employers, our team has built a free tool to allow you to see if there are pay gaps within your organization. We hope you’ll try it.
How we Live our Commitment to Diversity, Equity & Belonging
How We Hire
Part of building and nurturing a diverse and equitable workplace and culture where people feel they belong starts before employees become… employees. It starts with bringing a D&I lens to each hiring stage, from job descriptions to sourcing to interviewing and employer branding too. Going forward, how we will hire includes:
- Majority of sourcing dedicated to underrepresented groups. We are dedicating more than 50% of our sourcing efforts, including our online advertising campaigns, to focus on underrepresented groups.
- Eliminating bias in job descriptions. We are leveraging technology to help us review, write and rewrite all job descriptions, so language and messaging included are inclusive and free of bias.
- Where we post our open jobs. While Glassdoor and other major job sites host our open jobs, we are also proactively posting our jobs on smaller job boards with high user rates among underrepresented groups.
- Diverse university recruiting. We are creating deeper partnerships and a stronger employer brand among universities with large Black and Hispanic or Latino student bodies, as well as those with a majority of women students. In addition, we will be partnering with student diversity clubs and associations at colleges and universities across the nation.
- Interviewing standards. We are providing interview and diversity training for executives, recruiters, hiring managers and employee interviewers in an effort to ensure a fair and inclusive interviewing process for all candidates.
- ERG meet & greets. We will welcome and encourage candidates to meet with leaders and/or members of our various employee resource groups (ERGs) to learn more, ask questions and get a better sense of what it’s like to work at Glassdoor.
- Our employer brand values diversity. On our own Glassdoor profile on Glassdoor, we have the opportunity to tell job seekers more about our mission, values and who we are. One section will be dedicated to diversity and regularly updated with news, photos, programs and other information related to Glassdoor’s commitment to fostering a diverse and inclusive culture where everyone feels they belong.
- Testing & trying for success. One way to get better is to challenge norms and established policies. Upon reviewing our hiring practices, we have identified two areas we will no longer support because we believe they had the unintended consequence of limiting the diversity of candidates:
- We are ending our employee referral bonus program. While in some cases we previously would pay as much as several thousand dollars as a bonus to employees for referral hires, this can lead to attracting like-minded candidates from similar backgrounds. In order to encourage diversity of background and thought, we will no longer incentivize referrals.
- We are ending a policy that actively encouraged employees to refer family members and relatives. Upon further review, we realize this may have limited the range and diversity of candidates we attracted and limited our ability to consider candidates of different backgrounds and perspectives relative to our existing workforce.
Employee Resource Groups
To support a diverse and inclusive workplace, Glassdoor currently has six employee resource groups (ERGs). These groups are designed to be welcoming places where employees can join together to celebrate shared cultures, backgrounds and experiences. This includes experiences both inside and outside of work. Our ERGs also play a key role in contributing their expertise and experiences to Glassdoor, ranging from contributions to product improvements, employee policies, company events and more. ERGs also volunteer and give back to their local communities.
Today, 40% of Glassdoor’s 700+ employees globally are ERG members and 4% are ERG leads. We pay our ERG leads additional compensation to show our commitment to and appreciation for their work. We also provide training to the managers of our ERG leads to ensure they understand the value of the ERG lead role, and we include the ERG lead’s role and responsibilities into their overall performance goals.
Our current ERGs include:
- BUILD: Blacks united in leadership and development
- DICE: Diversity, inclusion, community & equity council
- La Familia: Latinx group
- Pride: LGBTQ+ group
- WinG: Women in Glassdoor
- New! Asian ERG in development!
Education and Programs
We also offer a variety of training programs, volunteer opportunities and events to further celebrate diversity at Glassdoor. Some of what we provide includes:
- Equity and diversity trainings
- Internal speaker series, ranging from How to Be an Ally to Celebrating Black Leaders
- Documentary watch parties and discussions
- Employees can take 3 days each year, fully paid, to volunteer in the community or support groups or social causes they are passionate about
These are but the first steps we are taking to share our D&I metrics and goals. By being transparent, we will be held accountable to the actions we have committed to drive change. Keep us to it. We will be back next year with an update.
*Methodology:
- Glassdoor’s 2020 employee population and demographic data is as of July 25, 2020 and based on internal data shared voluntarily by Glassdoor employees.
- Race/ethnicity data represents U.S. workforce only in light of relevant European privacy laws.
- In some cases, percentages for certain fields may not equal 100% due to employees choosing not to disclose certain demographic information. In addition, in some cases, percentages may exceed 100% due to rounding.
- We have plans to collect and report on additional demographics going forward so we can better understand and support even more of our employee population.