Should Business Leaders Care About What Their Employees Say on Glassdoor?

In my work as an executive coach, I will sometimes peruse the Glassdoor comments of both client companies and prospective client companies.  It helps me to get a better sense of what some of the key issues within an organization might be – or so I thought.

Some questions have always run through my mind about the feedback expressed on websites like Glassdoor:

  1. How representative is the feedback expressed?
  2. Are those that are disgruntled with their company more likely to post on Glassdoor than those who are happy, thereby creating an unrealistic skewing of the data toward the negative?
  3. Even if the feedback is reasonably accurate, how much does it matter?