A ‘TripAdvisor’ for the workplace lets employees anonymously review any companies’ treatment of female staff.
Despite raised awareness and some progress over the past few years, inequality and sexism in the workplace are still all too common. Until now it has been very difficult to gauge in advance what the atmosphere in an office will be like, how you will be treated as an employee and what problems you may encounter in the office culture. Once an employee has worked for a company long enough to experience these problems, it is often too late and they might be afraid to leave their job or to complain.
Female jobseekers can now review the treatment of women in their potential workplace via an online platform called InHerSight. The website collates anonymous reviews from former and current employees – both male and female – so that women can find out more about the company’s policies, office culture and other potential issues before applying for or accepting a job there.
A recent survey by Cosmopolitan magazine found that one in three women are sexually harassed at work and InHerSight enables those women to communicate misconduct and other problematic corporate policies. Importantly, they can do so without fear of recrimination or consequence, since the scorecards are entirely anonymous. Often, problems go unmentioned because employees are concerned that, if they raise issues, they will be seen as troublemakers and, at best, treated differently and, at worst, fearful of losing their jobs.
Users can complete surveys about their experience at any given company – either adding to an existing score or creating a new profile – by scoring them on 14 categories including their stance on maternity leave, flexible working hours and female representation in top positions. They can also leave a written review of the company. The crowdsourced data is then used to create comprehensive scorecards for other users to view.
By bringing individual insights together into a common framework, InHerSight provides a well-informed and representative picture of what it’s really like for women in the workplace. It covers all different kinds of workplaces from offices to warehouses, wherever women work. These insights provide transparency for both employees and employers.
InHerSight’s ratings help women make better-informed decisions about what companies they want to work for based on issues that are relevant to their lives, including career growth, family-friendly policies and office culture. The scorecards also allow employers to see how their policies are perceived, whether it is good, bad or neutral. Those that want to attract and retain top female talent can use the feedback and InHerSight’s collective data to develop a workplace that supports women.
Both women and men have already rated thousands of past or present employers, from government agencies to household names like Amazon, Google, Coca-Cola, Walmart and Microsoft.
As with any ratings-based platform, it will be open to abuse and dishonest feedback – either from people with a personal dislike for a company or from malicious competitors attempting to sabotage a rival company’s reputation. However, this problem should be addressed when the volume of reviews is large enough that any clearly anomalous ratings will be obvious as outliers.
Founder Ursula Mead envisions the site as a TripAdvisor for women in the workplace and hopes that, by holding companies accountable for their support for women, it will encourage them to review and improve their treatment.
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Website: www.inhersight.com
Contact: support@inhersight.com
Innovation name: InHerSight
Country: United States
Industries: Non-profit & social cause / Workspace