What makes for the Best Place to Work

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1:04Daniel Zhao: this is eat sleep work repeat a podcast about making better workplace culture hello i'm bruce just a quick hit episode today i've been a keen follower of the glass door website for a long time they often publish interesting data that analyzes some of the things that they find so for those who don't know glass door is a website that allows you to go and review your current employer and quite often allows you in return to see reviews of other employers. Maybe if you're considering going somewhere else, you want to check out what people are saying about the culture, or you just want to give your own employer a rating, a perspective about what management should change.

1:45Daniel Zhao: And as a result, it produces quite a healthy data set. In the past, we've featured an interview with Donald and Charles Solt, a father and son research duo who use Glassdoor data to give us a perspective on the whole world of work. They've used data to suggest that actually when it comes to staying at a company, culture is way more important than salary or way more important than several other aspects. Really helpful examination of what comes from Glassdoor. I was interested in chatting to them as their brand new league table for the best firms to work at in the US came out. So I was able to chat to their chief economist, Daniel Zhao, and he was able to take me under the hood of their methodology, explain what it means, but also really sort of try and unpack some of the trends that they were seeing.

2:39Daniel Zhao: So one of the big trends is that tech firms are no longer the most desirable places to work. That's partly because I think tech firms have gone out of their way to deprioritise one of the things that's most well desired at the moment. That is flexibility. And tech firms have been amongst the leading firms to demand that people return to the office. I think tech firms have also used weaponized job cuts in the last couple of years to reduce the size of their organizations. And as a result, some of the luster of tech has gone. NVIDIA still sits as number two in their league tables. I suspect that might be down to the fact that the value of NVIDIA stocks has gone up so much in the last few years.

3:21Daniel Zhao: I think the average employee is now a millionaire. So you're going to see some of those things. Really interesting because I think the fact that the number one firm is a car wash, the number three firm is a burger chain, it helps us actually get under the surface of examining what it is we want in a job. Really quick discussion with Daniel Zao, Chief Economist of Glassdoor.

3:48Daniel Zhao: Daniel, to kick off, I wonder if you could introduce who you are and what you do.

3:51Donald Sull: Yeah, so my name is Daniel Zhao. I'm the Chief Economist at Glassdoor. So I run Glassdoor's economic research team. And our team is really dedicated to using Glassdoor's unique data set to uncover what's going on and what's trending in the workplace with employee experience, you know, pretty much anything that you can think of about what's going on for employees right now.

4:12Daniel Zhao: And I wonder if you could just remind us how the Glassdoor mechanic works, Point out for us how people find themselves reviewing and finding out information on Glassdoor.

4:21Donald Sull: Glassdoor is really the place to go to for insights about career and about companies. And most of our data, the vast majority of our data comes from employees who are coming to our site and telling us what their experience was at their current or previous employer. So they're leaving a review that articulates the pros, the cons, any advice to management that they have, and some ratings as well about different parts of their experience. And that helps articulate at an aggregate level how well a company treats their employees or how poorly a company treats their employees. And because there's a lot of detail that comes in these reviews, we can really dive down and try to get a better understanding for what is really driving five-star experience versus one or two-star experience.

5:09Daniel Zhao: And tell me this, I've seen people draw upon your data, Donald Sol and his son Charlie Sol, use Glassdoor data to help them really sort of articulate how important workplace culture is. But is that something that you observe firsthand in the data, that the culture that we work in is a big determinant of where we work and how we make that decision?

5:30Donald Sull: Yeah, Don and Charlie Sol do great work looking at what are some of these more specific determinants of culture. And I think that one of the findings that comes out of the Glassdoor data is that, unsurprisingly, culture does really matter for how employees feel about their workplace. And I think one of the more interesting things is that when we actually look at what some of these determinants of the employee experience and employee satisfaction are, most people think it's a work-life balance or how much you're getting paid. And it turns out that those factors don't really explain day-to-day employee satisfaction quite as much as, say, career growth, management, or culture.

6:09Donald Sull: Those tend to be things that determine whether somebody is happy on a day-to-day basis. And if you think about it, that kind of makes sense, right? So if your manager is terrible and they're just driving you too hard on a daily basis, that's really going to impact your experience in the workplace. you might be being paid well, but that doesn't really matter if you just dread going into the office every day, right? So, and that works both ways as well. There are plenty of people who maybe don't feel like they're being paid quite as much or have like worst work-life balance, but they're in a culture that is really invigorating for their career.

6:45Donald Sull: It gives them a lot of growth opportunities and those are trade-offs that people often do make.

6:50Daniel Zhao: We saw the new data today and certainly for the US list, it's an eye-catching list, actually, because I think it's got a degree of everything. It's got a good deal more variety than you might anticipate. And it makes us, I think, reflect and ask ourselves, oh, what is a good job? What is the sort of job that we love feeling part of? The number one business, I had to search them because I thought their name surely can't be what it suggests. And it's a car wash business, as far as I can tell. NVIDIA second, we've got a burger restaurant along the way. Do you want to just describe for us, firstly, what the findings were about the best places and what lessons that might teach us about what a good job looks like?

7:36Donald Sull: Yeah, I thought the way you put it there was really a great way to describe it because you do have these companies that span a whole bunch of different industries. And also, crucially, the way that these companies are creating a best place to work is different. Not every company is going to have this access to the same tools or the same ways of creating culture. If you are a food service company, if you run a burger chain, you're not going to be able to create employee culture in the same way that a large consulting firm is going to be able to, right? But the fact that we see such a wide variety of companies across a different, a whole host of different industries, a whole host of different management styles and operating styles, I think really goes to show that it's more about offering something unique to employees and really being able to exceed their expectations.

8:29Donald Sull: So to double click on some specific examples, In-N-Out Burger in the top three, this is a regional chain that's really beloved by folks who live nearby. If you ever go to California, people swear by In-N-Out Burger. And so there really is this culture, not just within the employee base, but also within the customer base, where people are really strong believers in the company and in the product. And there is also an element of a different way that this company really treats their employees. So they offer better pay than their peers. You think of a food service job as traditionally not very well paid, but In-N-Out does offer better pay than their peers.

9:13Donald Sull: They offer benefits. And crucially, they offer career growth opportunities. So you could have somebody who starts as a cashier, works their way up to manager for the store, works their way up to corporate. And that's a level of career growth and a level of career opportunity that doesn't necessarily exist at some of their competitors. And that's really how they stand out. And that's why they're in the top three, even though a lot of people don't necessarily think about In-N-Out Burger in the same vein or same breadth as NVIDIA or Bain & Company.

9:44Daniel Zhao: You've raised some really interesting points along the way there. Adam Grant, the psychologist, talks about pride being a really important part of how we get value from our jobs. And I guess, to some extent, working at an organization that we feel proud to tell people we're part of, is about our individual identity and group identity reflecting well onto that. So that idea that we could tell people that we work somewhere and we're really proud of this brand that we represent. But you mentioned a couple of other things along the way there, you know, that hygiene factor of pay plays a really big part.

10:18Daniel Zhao: And there's other components that seem to be critical for here. To what extent does friendship or connection or cohesion at work play an additional part? Is there anything else that you're seeing in the data?

10:31Donald Sull: Yeah. So on that last point, I think connection is really, really important. This is something that I often hear from employees who are maybe a little bit jaded or a little bit burned out. And they're like, you know, for my next job, I'm not going to try to connect with my coworkers. Why should I care about being friends with my coworkers? I'm just going to go in, get my paycheck, and go out. And to some extent, that does sound appealing. It means that you don't have to get as emotionally invested. It means you might not get hurt by a company that mistreats or misuses that relationship, right?

11:00Donald Sull: But that's also the difference, I think, between a three out of five company versus a five out of five company. A company that actually creates that kind of environment and lives those values is really going to be able to stand out against a company where everybody just views it as a paycheck. So everybody kind of has a different level of emotional investment they want to put into their job, their career, their company. And it's okay to not want to be friends with all your coworkers. But that being said, I think the companies that are able to really create a unique and rewarding culture are ones where people feel connected to their co-workers, they feel engaged beyond just this is my nine to five job.

11:41Daniel Zhao: It's really interesting to the range of sectors in there as well. Do you think this represents the end of the age of tech firms being seen as the salvation for workplace culture? The idea that your best future might be working in tech. It doesn't seem to be backed up here. There's a really good range of different sectors, technology, consulting, consumer services, manufacturing. There's a really good range of employers there. What's your take on the sector analysis?

12:09Donald Sull: So tech has lost some of its luster. We see that there are 24 out of the top 100 best places to work were in the tech sector, which is down from 26 last year. And this is part of a broader trend that we're seeing where tech companies are putting a lot more pressure on their workforces to be more efficient, be more productive. They're trimming budgets or trimming headcount. And so there is a lot more pressure in the technology space. That being said, it is still the most represented industry on the list. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that tech does still offer enormous upside from a career and financial perspective.

12:50Donald Sull: It's not every company, of course, but you have a company like NVIDIA in the top three where employees talk about how amazing it is to be at the bleeding edge of this new AI revolution. Obviously, that's very rewarding from a financial perspective, but also from a career perspective as well to be able to say, I worked on this incredibly cool problem or product that is really addressing or really creating change in society. Right. So I think that technology still is very attractive to people, especially when you think about how lucrative it can be from that financial and career perspective for folks just coming out of college.

13:29Donald Sull: It's not like, say, medicine or law where you necessarily need to go and get a graduate or professional degree. And so you have these jobs that are a little bit more accessible. They have this upside. You have an industry that historically has been a big investor in employee culture and experience. It has lost some of its luster in the last few years, to be fair. But it is still a very attractive industry for folks trying to grow their careers.

13:58Daniel Zhao: We've mentioned Charlie and Donald Sol before. And one of the things that they've drawn from the Glassdoor data before, and they've been incredibly complimentary about how effective the data is. But one of the things they've drawn from it before is that in the past, good culture is seven times more effective than salary when it comes to us deciding to stay at an organization. But do you produce a hierarchy in your mind when you're thinking about what is the most important thing for someone when they're thinking about a job?

14:28Donald Sull: Yeah, so hierarchy is a good word to use because there is a similar Maslow's hierarchy of needs when we're talking about career, right? Part of the reason that we talked earlier about work-life balance and compensation and benefits not ranking as highly is because those are baseline things. They're the kinds of things where you wouldn't even necessarily want to get into the job at all if you don't meet those requirements. And so there are many people who, when they're applying to jobs, say, hey, this job just doesn't meet my bare minimum criteria. I'm not even going to bother applying. or if they get the offer and they realize that the compensation is too low, they just don't even bother taking it.

15:06Donald Sull: So it's kind of a very baseline filter on whether a job even is acceptable or not. But then as you go above that, there are things that, well, okay, I decided to take this job, but what is actually determining whether my day-to-day experience is good? You have something like senior management, which is really important because that determines culture, right? So you You have if senior managers are pushing certain cultural practices that aren't really healthy, that is going to trickle down through the rest of the organization. So that is really important, but it is a little bit detached from people's day-to-day experience.

15:44Donald Sull: You're not interacting with the CEO on a daily basis, even if they are modeling what good behavior should be at the company. And then you have things that are more proximate to the employee, right? So career growth, culture and values. These are things that you're thinking about more on a daily basis, and whether you're learning, whether you're growing, whether you enjoy the people that you work with around you, and those are things that are really going to swing whether you're having a good experience on any given day or not in a way that, sure, you want to be paid well, you want to have good work-life balance, but those are kind of like table stakes, whereas the things that really elevate a culture and really elevate an employee experience are the things at the top of that.

16:28Donald Sull: hierarchy, that culture, that career growth opportunity.

16:32Daniel Zhao: Yeah, that's why it's so interesting to see the organizations that have really stood out and done well, because, you know, they've obviously focused on some of those things. Just to finish, really, if you were advising organizations who were thinking about their employee proposition, they were thinking about, we want to be one of these best places to work, we want to aspire to rise up the rankings. You've mentioned a few things along the way there, but are there some sort of things that they should focus on? Should they encourage employees to post? Should they incentivize employees to post? How should they think about this?

17:06Donald Sull: Yeah. So just to start, I think it's important to try to understand where employees are, right? So asking employees for feedback and whether that's on Glassdoor or internal surveys or roundtables, that sort of thing, like just getting a sense of how employees are feeling is the first step to improving culture. Because every company is different. Every company has different challenges. Even within company, every team has different challenges. And you're not going to be able to address those problems that do exist unless you actually have a good understanding of what's going on. We don't think that companies should incentivize that kind of feedback because you want that feedback to be honest and authentic and truthful, right?

17:56Donald Sull: And that requires like there not being any incentives attached to that. But it also means building a culture where people feel like they can be honest and they can be authentic. So I think that asking for feedback, asking for honest feedback is really one important thing. Another aspect of that is in the other direction, it is really important for leaders and companies to be transparent. We see that transparency and communication are values that employees are really emphasizing, especially in the post-COVID world, where, you know, for, say, a remote company, you need to go a little bit beyond what was normal in pre-COVID because you need to be able to keep people connected.

18:40Donald Sull: You need to make sure people have the information that they need that they might not be getting if they're in a remote context, whereas maybe they were just picking up a lot of that passively around the water cooler in the pre-COVID era. So transparency and communication, really important, especially in an uncertain world like we have today, right? And then the last thing I'll maybe mention here is flexibility is also something post-COVID that has come up as very, very important. And that is not just, say, remote work or hybrid work opportunities. That's definitely something we hear from employees that they really value.

19:15Donald Sull: But I think, crucially, flexibility, what's underlying that is autonomy, right? Like, workers want to feel like they are being trusted by their employer to get the work done in the best way, in the way that they know is best for them, right? So if that means that, hey, actually, my best working hours are a little bit off from the traditional nine to five, but I'm going to be really, really productive from seven to three, that's something that I should be able to decide as the employee, right? So flexibility, which I guess is kind of downstream from autonomy, is another really important thing that employers should think about as a way to give some power back to workers.

19:59Daniel Zhao: Yeah, I was really struck actually, just sort of when I saw the list, I went into some of the brands that I'd not seen before, you know, I hadn't heard of crew car washes. And so I went and read some of the reviews. And the really sort of, I think, promising thing for anyone aspiring to get into the list is that it wasn't just universal positives from crew employees. Some of them wanted a slightly different set up here or they said that there was a manager that wasn't as good as... You know, these were, they felt genuine entries. It wasn't like the whole group of crew car wash had suddenly gone en masse to post positive reviews.

20:40Daniel Zhao: So it felt aspirational for other organizations to think, okay, well, I think we could aspire to that level of greatness, that level of good culture. It didn't feel like it was selling something that was truly perfect and you couldn't aspire to it. Really fascinating to dig into the detail I found.

21:00Donald Sull: Yeah, I think that is an excellent point. Like none of these companies on the best places to work are perfect. They are all unique, right? They all have a different way that they are trying to create an experience. And for some people, that won't be a perfect fit, and that's totally okay. You might have a company that pushes their employees really, really hard, but offers great career growth opportunities. And that's a tradeoff that many employees are willing to take. But for some of them, that won't work out. That's okay. You're creating a unique culture with a unique employee value proposition.

21:33Donald Sull: and you're going to get some harsh feedback as a result. But I think this is a really important point. You're talking about some of these reviews. They're more balanced. They talk about some of the pros and cons. The point of getting reviews on Glassdoor or getting feedback from employees is not to get positive feedback. The point is to get constructive feedback so you know where you can improve. Obviously, it's great. Everybody loves to get positive feedback. They love to hear all the things that they're doing well and the strengths that they can rely on. But if you're only getting positive feedback, chances are you're missing out on some of the things that you really can improve on.

22:15Donald Sull: And ultimately, if you are actually investing in improving the employee experience, employees will recognize that. And that's kind of like the organic way to improve your reputation, your employer brand, is to make sure that the ground truth, that employees feel like things are good and that they're improving, that's really the foundation for growing your employer brand overall.

22:39Daniel Zhao: Daniel, I'm so grateful you took the time to talk to us on the day the research came out.

22:45Donald Sull: Yeah, it was lovely to chat.

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24:25Daniel Zhao: Thank you to Daniel. There's links to the Glassdoor report and data on the show notes and there's a full transcript on the website. Grateful for Daniel taking the time to talk to me and if you're interested in Glassdoor or anything to do with their results, you should check that out. Really interesting exploration of what we want in our jobs. I've been Bruce Daisley. Thank you so much for listening. See you next time.

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