- As we advocate for workplace transparency everywhere, it’s imperative that we also “walk the talk” here at Glassdoor.
- Glassdoor is committed to representation goals that ensure a diverse and inclusive workplace.
- Take a look at our progress and what's to come from Glassdoor in diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Fifteen years ago, Glassdoor took the world by storm with a level of radical transparency that had never before been seen in the workplace. It is this same vision that continues to inspire us today as we build and grow the leading community for workplace conversations.
Our focus is to help people connect authentically and anonymously with professionals like them through real talk where work and life intersect. We’re also empowering company leaders to operate transparently, which helps drive increased accountability for all of their employees’ experiences.
As we advocate for workplace transparency everywhere, it’s imperative that we also “walk the talk” here at Glassdoor. Today we continue our own commitment to creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace by publishing our fourth annual DEI Transparency Report.
I am proud of the milestones we have already achieved and the progress we are continuing to make, but there is still more work to do. Our hope is that as we share our successes and failures, we are able to further contribute to the overall DEI knowledge base, and in turn, help foster the conditions for this important work to make a broader societal impact.
Christian Sutherland-Wong
Glassdoor CEO
Strategy
Our strategy is based on three key areas:
- Workforce – The belief that a diverse workforce, across all of its dimensions, will be a competitive advantage for us.
- Workplace – The belief that for us to achieve high performance, we must ensure the Glassdoor team members’ experiences allow them to contribute, grow, take on new challenges, and reach their full potential.
- Marketplace – The belief that as we become a home for workplace conversations and help people navigate their experience through each part of the career life cycle, we ensure that diversity is an integrated part of the process.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these key areas.
Workforce
Everything starts with having a diverse workforce. In 2020, Glassdoor committed to a set of aspirations that we plan to reach by 2025. Many of those aspirations are designed to increase representation amongst the underrepresented groups at Glassdoor (URGs). URG is defined as individuals who self-identify as Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and/or Women in technical roles (Women in Tech). Here’s an update on our progress to date.
Aspirations
We continue to strive towards our 2025 aspirational goals in representation that were set in 2020. As of April 2023, our representation of Women and Underrepresented Groups (URGs) in leadership are already in alignment with our 2025 aspirations of 50% and 15%, respectively.
- Progress with Latinx (7%) and Women in Tech (30%) continues to grow towards the 2025 aspirations of 10% and 33%, respectively.
- This past year, workforce representation saw a 1% decrease with employees self-identifying as Black (7%), and those self-identifying as Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian/Indigenous American/Alaska Native (0%) from 2022. This is in comparison to our 2025 aspirations of 8% and 1%, respectively.
| 2022 | April 2023 | 2025 Aspiration | |
| Black | 8% | 7% | 8% |
| Latinx | 6% | 7% | 10% |
| Pacific Islander/ Native Hawaiian/ Indigenous American/ Alaska Native |
Less than 1% | 0% | 1% |
| Women in Tech | 28% | 30% | 33% |
| Women in Leadership | 43% | 50% | 50% |
| URGs in Leadership | 7% | 15% | 15% |
We are committed to continuing the work needed to achieve our 2025 aspirations and have implemented structural changes to improve our sourcing and promotion processes. We’d like to share just a few of the ways that we are doing just that.
Candidate Pool Rule
To help reach our 2025 DEI goals, stage one of the “Candidate Pool Rule” (CPR) was launched in July 2022, with the following criteria as a requirement through the recruitment process for all Senior Manager and above roles:
- One-week of URG Sourcing must be completed as the requisition is open.
- One (1) candidate must be non-male identifying, and
- One (1) candidate must be a US underrepresented racial/ethnic minority at the panel interview stage.
- No candidate should be considered for an offer until CPR is satisfied.
- Number of candidates at each stage of the interview process is not capped.
Why it improves our pipelines
Although one week of URG sourcing has been a standard practice for the Talent Acquisition team since October 2020, the Candidate Pool Rule ensures that URG sourcing is an on-going process, and is present throughout the requisition life cycle. Subsequently, the candidate pipelines are more robust, and showcase greater candidate diversity.
What our recruiters are doing differently
The Candidate Pool Rule (CPR) has facilitated a number of adjustments to our intake meeting process, including the following:
- Ensuring both the recruiter and the hiring manager have agreed to apply the CPR
- Reviewing the requirements of CPR, addressing any open questions, and discussing how candidates will be sourced inclusively through one week of URG sourcing
- Setting additional expectations with the hiring manager around the candidate process, interviewer panel, and inclusive sourcing practices.
One of the biggest changes for our recruiters has been setting expectations with hiring managers, and making sure that they are on the same page from the outset. That means bringing the conversation back to the company’s DEI goals, and ensuring that any referrals are not being fast-tracked through the interview process without the requisition meeting the CPR requirements.
Compliance rates
To date, the compliance rate for the CPR has been 100% for all Director Level and above roles.
In our current fiscal year we made CPR applicable to all roles. What are the impacts of this?
This fiscal year, we extended CPR to be applicable to all roles. Given that no candidate will be considered for an offer until CPR is satisfied, we are likely to see an increase in our time to fill requisitions across the board, a compromise that as an organization we are willing to make to promote a diverse population at Glassdoor.
Our internship program
The “Glassdoor Internship Program” set a goal to have 40% URG representation. To support this goal, the intern recruiting team followed the sourcing structure below.
- University recruiting team conducted a minimum of one (1) week of URG sourcing for all intern roles prior to posting roles externally.
- Partnered with schools, coding programs, and job boards that support diverse, underrepresented, and non-traditional students to share intern roles and source candidates.
- Partnered with Glassdoor’s “Employee Resource Groups”(ERGs) to share intern roles to their respective networks.
As a result of our intern program’s extensive efforts in sourcing and connecting with underrepresented emerging talent, we achieved the following for the summer 2023 intern class:
- 68% URG candidates in the hiring manager interview stage
- 66% URG candidates in the virtual onsite interview stage
- 79% total URG hires
Workplace
There are many elements to creating and maintaining an inclusive culture in an organization including leadership modeling of DEI principles, assessing pay equity on a regular basis, and powerful ERGs.
Holding ourselves accountable to be a more equitable workplace for our employees will be critical for our success in the coming years. Here’s a few ways we’re looking to do that:
Journey Lead
The “Journey Lead” program is a four month program where a group of employees engage in deep self-reflective work, dialogue, community building and conversation to become a change champion for diversity, equity and inclusion at Glassdoor (and in all facets of your life). In this program, employees learn the concepts of allyship and explore their own personal relationship to allyship and practice in a safe space. Long term, employees are enabled to facilitate allyship training, confidently articulate their own personal DEI philosophy, and manage and lead through change.
Pay equity
Glassdoor regularly conducts a review of our employee compensation to ensure it is equitable across sex and race. In these analyses, we use regression analysis to perform an apples-to-apples comparison across demographics. For example, we compare pay for males and females, controlling for characteristics like job title, location, tenure and job level to ensure that we are offering equal pay for equal work. To promote workplace transparency and encourage other employers to share pay equity information, we also have published the results of our pay equity analyses each year stretching back to 2016. In our latest analysis for 2023, we again found no statistically significant pay gaps by sex or race, affirming our commitment to pay equity and transparency.
Key highlights for Glassdoor’s FY24 DEI strategy
There are a number of key highlights for this fiscal year building upon our accomplishments:
- Talent Development and Retention - Going forward each Glassdoor executive has created business-based strategic DEI plans that include a unique focus on talent development, while ensuring underrepresented groups are included in mentor matching, development plans, and engagement interviews.
- Cultural Competence - In addition to developing universal craft competencies designed to ensure an empowered workforce, all employees will also participate in facilitator-lead DEI training to enhance individual skills in working across cultures and a wide range of differences. Our ERGs continue adding to awareness and understanding of differences with their programs, and rollout of the new “Culture Hours” – whereby leaders, as part of their strategic DEI plans, have committed their support through protecting schedules for employees to experience these learning opportunities.
- Director+ commitment to a number of behaviors and practices that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion at Glassdoor.
Employee Resource Groups
Glassdoor has six Employee Resource Groups which ERGs heavily influence our culture of belonging and inclusion. Each ERG sets yearly goals that are specific to their communities needs. Our ERGs were able to accomplish many milestones this past year. They provided professional development opportunities for their members and allies, created space for volunteering with their selected non profit partners and celebrated their heritage months in special ways. Below are some highlights of the unique impacts our ERGs have made:
ADEPT: Advocates for Disability Education, Partnership Talent ERG
- ADEPT worked with Glassdoor’s human resources team to make changes to the disability module in our Workday tool. These changes can make it easier and less confusing to self-ID disability.
- In March, ADEPT completed and submitted the “NOD Employment Tracker” to the National Organization on Disability to get Glassdoor's scorecard in six (6) key disability inclusion focus areas. The results will be available in late July 2023.
BUILD: Blacks United in Leadership & Development ERG
- BUILD took heritage month celebrations to new heights with a diverse celebration of Black history including a panel discussion on building career equity, a cooking class lead by our own Glassdoor team members, a panel on parenting (an cross-ERG collaboration with WinG, ADEPT, and PRIDE), highlights of our Black employees, and their first Fishbowl Live event focused on women in leadership.
- BUILD energized their partnership with aligned non-profit YearUp, for which they provided resume coaching and a speaker series which helped inform and prepare underserved youth to enter the workforce.
GAIN: Glassdoor Asian Impact Network ERG
- For AANHPI Heritage Month, in partnership with Indeed's employee resource group called BRG, Simu Liu shared his own origin story of being a Chinese immigrant, his battles with cultural stereotypes and his own identity, becoming a TV star, and landing the role of a lifetime being Shang Chi in a fireside chat format with Indeed’s CEO.
- GAIN frequently reaches out to their community members for feedback. Based on our survey data, many members requested support in professional development, which resulted in the “Brag Better: Effective Self Reviews 101 Workshop” in partnership with the BUILD and LaFamilia ERGs.
LA Familia: Hispanic/Latinx ERG
- La Familia hosted an event with the non-profit organization Latinas in Tech and in collaboration with Glassdoor’s Product team. This event was for internal employees and also open externally. During the event there was a walkthrough of the GD product from a DEI lens.
PRIDE: LGBTQ+ ERG
- On Saturday, May 20, at the groundbreaking Connie Norman Transgender Empowerment Center in West Hollywood, Glassdoor’s PRIDE ERG was selected as this year's recipients of the Trans Can Work Employer Award: “Your leadership with Glassdoor’s Pride Group and your company's commitment to fostering an inclusive and supportive work environment for transgender, gender diverse & intersex individuals is truly commendable, and we believe it deserves to be celebrated in style.” - Trans Can Work
WinG: Women in Glassdoor ERG
- WinG continued their Community Door partnership with Dress for Success (DFS) and was able to conduct several workshops for members of the DFS community. WinG was also able to raise US$1,400 for DFS’ Her Hour Your Power Campaign!
We are so excited and thankful for all the hard work and accomplishments of our ERGs!
Marketplace
Since 2020, employers have continued to increase their investment in DEI. And a lot of this investment has turned from just goal-setting and transparency to action. As I mentioned earlier, if we want to see continued progress then we also need to “walk the talk.” We have plans this fiscal year to add new products and features that will enhance our current DEI product offerings. Below are a few of those product offerings:
Equity Xray
There is a growing focus on pay equity across the corporate world, with companies and job seekers increasingly seeking to understand the magnitude and drivers of pay gaps across gender and racial/ethnic groups. But for many workers, pay equity is just the tip of the iceberg. In the day-to-day hours between paychecks, equitable workplace experiences are perhaps more front of mind. In February 2023, Glassdoor launched the Equity Xray™, a first-of-its-kind analysis to shed light on companies where employees from distinct demographic groups report meaningful differences in workplace experience and satisfaction. Notably, nearly one-in-five companies had a meaningful gap in workplace satisfaction between men and women, and more than one-in-three companies had gaps between racial/ethnic groups, highlighting both that disparities in the workplace are still widespread but that there are also many employers with equitable workplace experiences.
Community & Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
For years, Glassdoor has served as a powerful tool for professionals from marginalized groups, providing crucial insights into workplace compensation and company culture to help level the playing field. Recently, we expanded our product offering, harnessing the power of community to offer new modes of support and engagement. On any given day, professionals interact with over two dozen identity-based groups on the newly launched Glassdoor app, sharing their unique work-life experiences in a safe and honest environment. These communities provide opportunities for real-time networking and mentorship, further enhancing Glassdoor's focus on DEI. This addition complements Glassdoor’s well-known salary and review data.
Glassdoor currently hosts fifty-five (55) identity-based communities, each designed to serve different historically marginalized groups. Every industry featured on the platform has a dedicated "Women in [industry]" community, with many also hosting communities for "Black professionals in [industry]". These communities cover a wide spectrum of identity facets, including race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexual orientation.
A key distinguishing factor of Glassdoor's identity-based communities compared to similar offerings on other platforms is the use of verified anonymity. Professionals, whose employers and titles have been verified by Glassdoor, have the unique ability to post anonymously. This opens up opportunities for breaking down informational barriers that frequently inhibit these groups.
For example, in the "Black in Tech" community, members discuss experiences of invisibility, while "Women in Tech" address stereotypes. Members in the healthcare sector utilize verified anonymity to find specific opportunities, and the "Women in Insurance" group engages in discussions about identifying the right company culture. These spaces, forged by shared identity and experience, have made Glassdoor's platform a powerful sanctuary for professionals to navigate their authentic selves in the workplace.
Moving forward
As we move into year four of our five year plan, we're continuing our mission to become the leading platform for workplace conversations. We have an opportunity to really lean into the role that our products play in creating transparency, equity, and community.
We believe in radical transparency and in holding organizations accountable for the workplaces they create. That includes and begins with us.
Methodology:
- Race/ethnicity data represents the non-European workforce only (European employee data was excluded in light of relevant privacy laws/regulations).
- Glassdoor’s 2023 DEI Transparency Report took into account the employee population and demographic data as of June 30, 2023, and is based on internal data voluntarily shared by Glassdoor employees.
- 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.