In the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court decision that ended the protections of Roe v. Wade, many employers announced changes to their benefits or made known their support of reproductive healthcare — and those that did so saw an 8% increase in clicks on job postings compared to similar jobs at companies that did not, according to analysis by Indeed and Glassdoor.
The data, generally, speaks to how gender and politics affect employers, particularly regarding retention and recruiting, according to the analysis.
Employers that had more women in their workforce or more Democratic-leaning workers were more likely to announce new reproductive health benefits in response to the ruling. Companies with employees in “trigger states” that banned abortion as soon as Dobbs was announced also were more likely to announce new benefits than employers without — but “only to a point,” Indeed said in its post on the report.
“The higher a given company’s share of employees working in trigger states was, the less likely that company was to make a public announcement of new or enhanced reproductive health benefits,” Indeed said. “We interpret this as evidence that these announcements were less about a benefit that companies expected many employees to take up, and more about signaling company culture.”
Companies that did announce tended to see more job posting clicks, particularly in female-dominated jobs in states where abortion rights were heavily curtailed, Indeed and Glassdoor said. But curiously, satisfaction with management among remaining employees went down — particularly in male-dominated jobs, in both left- and right-leaning states.
Glassdoor’s blog post about the analysis revealed that "woke" shows up 325% more often in the ‘Cons' section of reviews for companies that announced such benefits compared with those for non-announcing companies.
Such a deterioration could be for any number of reasons, the report said, but one aspect could be the perceived value of such benefits seeming more limited, compared to broad-based raises or other such compensation.
However, general compensation also rose among firms that made announcements post-Dobbs, even on top of the costs of new benefits, the analysis noted. “This wage increase is separate from, and cannot explain, the increased job seeker interest in postings from announcing firms,” Indeed said in its post on the analysis.
Those increases were also larger at companies that had deeper declines in management ratings, which could indicate that employers that heard backlash from their workers may have offered raises to offset dissatisfaction.
“Politics and gender in the workplace clearly matter, and their intersections impact hiring new employees, retaining current ones and setting company culture,” the report said. “Our research suggests that when workers learn about firm culture from outside the firm—for example, from social media or a press release—it can profoundly influence their job search. Current workers also respond to public statements of firm culture.”
