As a regular voyeur of Glassdoor since it first opened its virtual doors many years ago, I took a peek the other day and was surprised to see that it had developed its own Covid-19 toolkit. I should have realized that they would be engaged in helping people sort through all the job opportunities as job listings evaporated during the shutdown or listed job openings in certain industries during this very difficult time.

The first one is a Hiring Surge Badge which indicates that the company is experiencing a hiring surge and actively reviewing applicants. If you have a Hiring Surge Badge, you are given the opportunity to broadcast your employment opportunities. Smart.

The second offering is their emphasis on helping companies communicate how they are responding to the pandemic. A company can share a company update on their Glassdoor profile with a special COVID-19 badge that allows employers to highlight and share their work ranging from home policies, employee benefits, learning and development opportunities, and more. This too is very helpful for companies who want to show that they are doing their best to be fair at how they treat employees. Again, a good move.

Another service that compelled me to search for more about what Glassdoor was doing was that in addition to listing anonymous employee entries on what it is like to work at an employer by most recent, least recent, highest rating, lowest rating, you can now review by “COVID-19 related.” I imagine this small pink banner saying COVID-19 is to meant to highlight what employees say about how their companies treated employees once the lockdowns began and the coronavirus took hold. This falls into my corporate accountability argument of how companies are now being tracked for how they responded to the virus with safety and public health measures.

I went to one company’s rating who I had heard not such good things about with regard to their treatment of employees during the coronavirus and under a COVID-19 pink banner, read this: “Close the stores and pay your employees their hourly rate at their normal weekly time (i.e. pay your full time people for 40 HOURS not 20). If you can't do that, at the bare minimum allow employees to wear gloves and masks while working. Your customers and employees will never forget how you've handled this situation and I hope your bottom line reflects that, since that's all you care about anyway.”

Reviews like this would scare anyone away and would certainly drive consumers to think twice about buying from a company with a slew of reviews like this if they came across them. I imagine that these types of comments will figure into a big expose in the media when the time comes to account for corporate behavior during these troubled times. Someone is probably working on this feature right now.