Most companies say they care about diversity. And many executives claim to be redoubling their efforts to make workplaces more inclusive in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and the #MeToo movement around the world.
But how are companies’ actions matching their rhetoric? Glassdoor, the website that encourages current and former employees to offer candid assessments of their workplaces and share salary information anonymously, is launching a new rating system to hold companies accountable for diversity and inclusion.
The new ratings will enable current and past employees to anonymously score employers on how well they are doing on diversity and inclusion using a five-point scale. The diversity and inclusion area is now one of six where people can anonymously rate employers. The others are compensation and benefits, career opportunities, culture and values, the effectiveness of senior management, and work/life balance.
Glassdoor is also launching a “frequently asked questions” section specifically on employers’ diversity efforts, with the answer taken from employee reviews on Glassdoor.
To launch the new rating feature, Glassdoor allowed users to score 12 large companies: Accenture, Amazon, Apple, Deloitte, Facebook, Google, McDonald’s, Salesforce, Starbucks, Target, Uber, and Walmart. Of these businesses, Salesforce was ranked best, with an average rating of 4.6. Uber scored the worst, with a rating of 3.6.
Uber did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Glassdoor scores. The ride-hailing company has sought to improve the diversity of its workforce in the past three years. In the most recent report on its own efforts, the company noted that it had increased the number of women in senior roles by 7.1% since 2018 and that it had seen a slight uptick in the number of Blacks, Latinos, and Asians in upper management in the U.S.
“Really care about equity”
Christian Sutherland-Wong, the Glassdoor chief executive officer, said in a statement that his company felt it had a responsibility to increase transparency around diversity and inclusion. “Job seekers and employees today really care about equity, and for too long they’ve lacked access to the information needed to make informed decisions about the companies that are or are not, truly inclusive,” he said.
Glassdoor said that its decision to launch the diversity-specific metrics was driven in part by a survey conducted among job seekers and employees. It found that, overall, among respondents in the U.S., 63% said their own employer should be doing more to increase the diversity of its workforce. But the results showed that members of minority groups were much more likely to have this view—71% of Black and 72% of Hispanic respondents—compared with whites, only 58% of whom felt their employer needed to do more.
It also found that Black and Asian employees were more likely to value a diverse workforce, with about 80% saying it was an important factor when considering a prospective employer, compared with 75% of whites. Slightly more than 40% of Black respondents said they would not apply for a job at a company where there is a lack of diversity, compared with 30% among whites who answered the survey.