Glassdoor Adds Benefits Info

How do your company's benefits stack up? Glassdoor's newest feature lets job seekers compare time off, health insurance, office perks, and more.

Kristin Burnham, Senior Editor, InformationWeek.com

August 7, 2014

3 Min Read

IT Salary: 10 Ways To Get A Raise

IT Salary: 10 Ways To Get A Raise


IT Salary: 10 Ways To Get A Raise (Click image for larger view and slideshow.)

While salary is important, there's a lot more to consider before you accept a job offer. Does the company provide health and dental insurance? A 401(k) plan? What's its vacation policy?

Jobs and career site Glassdoor launched a new feature this week called Benefits Reviews, which gives job seekers insight into companies' perks based on crowdsourced information from current and former employees. Glassdoor says it hopes this information will help people find the best company fit based on their needs.

"Job seekers are already evaluating and comparing job offers, but with little information on what a benefits package really entails or whether it meets the need of employees," said Allyson Willoughby, SVP of people at Glassdoor. "Benefits and perks carry both personal and monetary value and impact an employee's satisfaction with their company. By unlocking information about benefits from those in the know, we believe it'll also lead to improved recruitment and employee retention rates."

[How does your job stack up? Read IT Salaries: 8 Cold Hard Facts.]

You can submit benefit information about your employer anonymously through an online survey. The questionnaire asks for the best and worst thing about your company's benefit package, then lists more than 50 benefits. You can mark each one as Yes, No, or Not sure.

Glassdoor's survey covers health and wellness benefits such as dental and vision insurance, financial and retirement perks like 401(k) and pension plans, family and parenting benefits such as maternity and paternity leave, vacation and sabbaticals, professional support such as tuition assistance and training, perks and discounts such as free lunches or a company car, and whether your office is dog friendly.

While former and current employees can rate a company's benefits, Glassdoor encourages employers to do the same through its Glassdoor Employer Profile. Here, employers can share details about what their benefits package includes and verify which ones their company does and doesn't offer.

The new feature has been in private beta for the last few weeks, so it's not yet easy to fully compare one company's benefits to another's. During the beta test, Glassdoor said it collected more than 4,000 anonymous benefit reviews from employees at a variety of companies.

glassdoor2.png

For example, a product engineer at Facebook commented about the company's on-campus amenities, such as the in-house gym, music room, wood shop, bicycles, and even a climbing wall. At Google, employees lauded the free food and compensation packages, but said that work-life balance is difficult to maintain.

In addition to the newly launched benefits section, Glassdoor also collects information on companies' salaries, which you can browse by title and city; the interview process, including whether the interview experience was positive and its difficulty; plus jobs the company is hiring for.

Consumerization means CIOs must grant personal devices access to corporate data and networks. Here's how to avoid loss and corruption. Get the new Mobile Security Action Plan issue of InformationWeek Tech Digest today (free registration required).

About the Author

Kristin Burnham

Senior Editor, InformationWeek.com

Kristin Burnham currently serves as InformationWeek.com's Senior Editor, covering social media, social business, IT leadership and IT careers. Prior to joining InformationWeek in July 2013, she served in a number of roles at CIO magazine and CIO.com, most recently as senior writer. Kristin's writing has earned an ASBPE Gold Award in 2010 for her Facebook coverage and a Min Editorial and Design Award in 2011 for "Single Online Article." She is a graduate of Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Never Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.

You May Also Like


More Insights