Dive Brief:

• Glassdoor will now break down company ratings and salary information by employee demographics, the employer rating site announced Feb. 17. Data will begin appearing on employer pages today.
• The site began collecting employee demographic data in 2020 and has insights from more than 187,000 employees at 3,300 companies, it said in a press release. A rating tied to race/ethnicity, gender identity, parental or caregiver status, disability, sexual orientation and veteran status will appear when Glassdoor has at least five ratings from employees in a demographic group; a salary average by gender identity and race/ethnicity will appear when there are at least three salary reports from employees among a demographic group with the same job title at a specific company. Employees from companies including Walmart, Amazon, Target, Starbucks and AT&T have shared the most information so far, Glassdoor said.
• The move is part of the company's goal to "leverage its product and resources to help achieve equity in and out of the workplace," it said. Glassdoor said it expects employers will be able to see current employee sentiment levels and salary averages broken out by employee demographic groups, compare their own data against other companies and potentially leverage data points to assist with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) recruiting efforts.

Dive Insight:

Glassdoor's announcement comes just months after it began inviting workers to rate employers' diversity and inclusion efforts.

Several studies, including a 2019 report from ZipRecruiter, show that job seekers want to know whether a prospective employer values DEI, and that candidates will steer clear of employers with negative online reviews. While some companies have shared demographic data and made public commitments to improve — particularly during the protests for racial justice last summer — Glassdoor and others say more transparency is needed.

Those calls for improvement and transparency come at a time when HR professionals ranked recruiting and hiring as their top concern heading into 2021; nearly two-thirds of those responding to a November 2020 survey rated recruiting and hiring as "somewhat" or "very" challenging.

Accompanying Wednesday's announcement, Glassdoor shared some preliminary data from its collection efforts. For example, company ratings by Black employees are below average at 3.3, compared to the average Glassdoor rating of 3.5, it said. "This means that, overall, Black employees are less satisfied …  at work when compared to all employees. However, job satisfaction among Black employees varies widely by company," Glassdoor said. Apple had the highest overall company rating among Black employees with a 4.2 rating, it noted.