Glassdoor CEOs – Who’s Up? Who’s Down? Who’s Gone?

The last time we reported on CEO ratings on Glassdoor.com was at the end of 2008 when we looked at the Naughty and Nice CEOs of 2008.  Now that the first quarter is over, we’ve  updated the Glassdoor.com lists of highest and lowest rated CEOs, which includes the CEO Watch List (a list of lowest rated CEOs)  and highest rated CEOs. Interestingly, a number of the Watch List’s previous members have – uh, well – moved on.  (Most recently AOL’s Randy Falco).

At of the end of March, the CEO with the lowest approval rating is Office Depot‘s CEO Steve Odland, who has a 5% approval rating and 83% disapproval rating. Following is LexisNexis‘ Andy Prozes at 7%, dropping 6 percentage points and who also holds an 83% disapproval rating.  Between Odland and Prozes, they hold the highest disapproval rating among the least popular CEOs. Rounding out the bottom three is United Airlines CEO Glenn Tilton with a 9% approval rating and an 83% disapproval rating, according to his employees. As we’ve collected more data, eligibility for the CEO Watch List has expanded and  10 CEOs are newcomers among the 25 lowest rated, these include: Jim Crowe of Level 3 Communications with a 16% approval rating, Jack Potter of the USPS with a 22% approval rating and Mike Laphen of Computer Sciences who has a 22% approval rating.

Since we began tracking the CEO Watch List in August 2008, six members have ‘left the building’ at their respective employers, including AOL‘s Falco, Wal-Mart’s H. Lee Scott Jr., Yahoo‘s Jerry Yang and Merrill Lynch‘s Greg Fleming.  Employees can certainly give us insight into the happenings within companies, and maybe an indicator of CEO tenure – or lack thereof.

Among the highest rated CEOs, according to employees, we note Genentech‘s  Art Levinson remains among the top three highest rated CEOs on Glassdoor.com compared to what was reported in December (Last December Art Levinson was the #1 highest rated CEO followed by Apple‘s Steve Jobs (90%) and Goldman Sachs‘ Lloyd C. Blankfein (88%)). The biggest climb in ratings is with SAP CEO Henning Kagermann who climbed up to a 72% approval rating, 4 percentage points higher than what was reported in late December.  The biggest drop in CEO approval rating among the highest rated CEOs at this time is NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang who dropped 8 percentage points in the past three months and now sits at a 73% approval rating. Also interesting to note that American Express CEO Ken Chenault dropped off the list of highest rated CEOs altogether – he now comes in as the 36^th most highly rated CEO.