Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Joining us today from North Carolina is co-founder and CEO of InHerSight. Thanks for joining us. So a little more about Ursula Mead (Guest) is co-founder and…

Ursula Mead (Guest): I’m excited to be here.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): CEO of InHerSight the largest and most intersectional company reviews platform for women since the platform was founded in 2015. Ursula has been at the Forefront of Equity work ensuring her site collects ratings across the metrics. Flex the priorities of professional women millions of job Seekers leverage in her site’s data and content to find companies that align with their values and support their needs at different stages of their lives and careers.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Very cool. It’s such an amazing idea to start this, almost a decade ago, and we’d love to hear a little bit more about you and on her site as well. Maybe you can tell us what her site is and then a little bit about yourself and what you enjoy doing.

Ursula Mead (Guest): Absolutely. Yeah, I think your description of the platform covers a lot but to unpack it a little bit more in her site is a place where women share their Collective Anonymous insight into what it’s like to work at a company. Across the areas that are significantly more important to women at different stages of their lives and careers. Now, we measure things that in some cases are important to everyone of course, but that women often have different experiences with or depending on their different life stages may or may not be a higher priority. so

Ursula Mead (Guest): a good example would be we look at how satisfied women are with their access to equal opportunities or their representation in leadership. And these are some of our advancement metrics that help women assess whether they will feel supported if one of their priorities is career growth and advancing and moving into leadership at a company. We have a lot of other metrics that are focused on things like flexibility or parental leave or remote work that are around more of the schedule or work life integration side of things that women are often looking for now, especially, we were just looking at our data and flexibility is the most important metric for working women today. And if you look back five or six years ago, it wasn’t even in the top five actually.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): probably

Ursula Mead (Guest): Yeah, we’ve seen a really big jump there. And we also look at things like a sense of belonging or support for diversity. We’re often giving women a very tailored lens into a company where they’re saying. who I am. This is what I bring to the workplace and I want to make sure that other women like me are getting support across the areas that I care about. So that makes our platform really valuable to early career. Men who are just getting started and may think they know what they want. But realize later that they’re actually looking for something different and they can keep coming back to her sight as an ongoing resource as their lives change and as their priority shifts.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That’s very impressive and I’m curious. I’ve followed her site for a long time. I’ve read a lot of the research articles that you and your team are producing. Its Top Notch is very awesome and insightful information. Tell us more about the data set that you have how many employees are looking at her side every month. How many company profiles there are give us a little bit more context for someone who’s never heard of InHerSight.

Ursula Mead (Guest): Yeah, so Crista mentioned that we’re the largest and most intersectional database of women rated companies today. We have data for hundreds of thousands of employers in the US. This is really our focus is looking at Employers in the US because the metrics and the gender Equity work that needs to be done is really different sort of by geographic location. So we specialize in companies with offices or headquarters here. So we have 400s of companies that data can be anywhere from an early scorecard where it just has ratings from one or two employees who are sharing

Ursula Mead (Guest): Their insights to ratings from thousands of employees who have been coming to InHerSight over the years and sharing their insights about how things are changing and how things are staying the same. We are industry agnostics. So we have data across all different Industries, but from a job Seeker perspective, I’d say some of our richest data is in the industries where women have been more focused on finding the right support for longer where the conversation about workplace support has been louder. So for example, we have a lot of depth in tech companies and from women working in Tech because women in Tech have been in the spotlight for a long time as an demand Talent segment that companies are competing for but also an underserved Talent segment where their women are often the only one in an organization and need to make sure they’re doing their homework about a company

Ursula Mead (Guest): they get there and we also have a lot of depth in Industries like finance and in media also areas that are often in the news or in the spotlight on these topics, but interestingly right now where we’re seeing a lot of adoption is in a traditionally male-dominated industries that are growing really fast. So these are industries like construction and manufacturing and transportation where there’s really Demand for specialized workers or drivers or roles where we’re just seeing a lot of growth and demand versus Tech which we’re seeing less competition and pressure for at the moment.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That’s very interesting. And so I’m guessing before starting this company you had an experience or something that kind of made you feel passionate about this or I mean, you’re a woman obviously, so tell us a little bit about what led you to starting in her sight.

Ursula Mead (Guest): Yeah, yes, obviously my own experiences as a woman have certainly informed my perspective on this and my passion for it. Although interestingly. I did find that the company has two male founders who are also passionate about the gender equity space and they understand that it takes all of us…

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That’s great. Yeah.

Ursula Mead (Guest): but there wasn’t really what I’d call a moment where I said,…

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Okay.

Ursula Mead (Guest): This is what I need to be doing. It was more of a time of my life where I was a relatively new mom and at home. I had a baby girl at work. I was working in a male dominated industry and this was about a decade ago when there were very early conversations popping up about

Ursula Mead (Guest): Support for women at work, and I think it’s really hard sometimes today to realize or to appreciate that 10 years ago. These conversations were not happening very often. We were in essentially a lull in terms of attention to women in the workplace and we started to have around 2014-2015 these emerging new voices and conversations that we’re saying. Hey women aren’t supported at work in the way that they need to be supported. We need to be accelerating this. We need to be working on this because of my own work and life situation. I was just tuned in to that conversation. I became really interested in it. In fact. It was really predating some of the louder voices this was.

Ursula Mead (Guest): More around 2013 when I started to hear just bits and pieces of experiences and data where I was saying, there’s something happening here women are.

Ursula Mead (Guest): A growing percent of the workforce. We were about half of the workforce and talent pool. There’s all of this research coming out that shows that women improve business performance and at the same time women are chronically under supported when it comes to advancement opportunities when it comes to family growth support when it comes to Safety and Security which we later started to look at with the metoo movement. But all of these things were sort of brewing in the early stages and I was just listening I was paying attention in a way that I hadn’t before because I hadn’t been a working mom and financial Tech and the thing that really stood out to me was that

Ursula Mead (Guest): The tools that we were using to make progress for women in the workplace, we’re really outdated and they seemed really ineffective because at the time we were hundreds of years away from gender equality on certain fronts. I was like, all right, we’re working on this. We are still in some cases decades or centuries away from equity.

Ursula Mead (Guest): We’re not doing something right there’s something that’s a mismatch here. And so I started to think about what would a solution that’s more modern and more effective look like. What are the new tools that we can harness to try to create change for working women, which is really core to our mission. But also make this a really valuable experience and product for companies who all benefit from actually supporting the women who work for them and having a happy gender diverse Workforce. And so it was really the product of a lot of reading engaging with other women digging into the data assessing the landscape, we had people pushing for policy change. We had people talking about lean in circles. We had nonprofits that were

Ursula Mead (Guest): Sort of working at different areas of this but really there was no one using modern data Tech and transparency tools. And that was the Gap that we saw and we said this is a place where we could really add a lot of value.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And I love what you said transparency because I think that’s the driver for change. What you did is you gave a voice to both men and women to be able to share what they see is going well and what things they see are, not there yet. and it’s those things and being a good listener hearing those experiences that people have had to drive the change that needs to happen.

Ursula Mead (Guest): Yeah, and people are often saying this is Glassdoor for women and we get that because we’re both in the workplace. Realm but really when I was envisioning it. I was actually thinking a little bit more of a trip advisor or a Yelp at the time in the sense that these were platforms that really helped consumers find what they were looking for and improve what they get from those providers the metrics and the data you capture determine whether or not you’re going to be successful in that right? Because if we’re asking questions and we’re providing transparency into things that companies can’t do anything about

Ursula Mead (Guest): Then change can happen. No progress can be made. So we really wanted to bring something that was focused on change and on creating this feedback mechanism that both women can use but also companies can use to get to a better place together.

Ursula Mead (Guest): So when we started out we said, all we could measure lots of things about a company what is gonna make a difference and we settled on metrics that were at the intersection of what women are looking for and what companies can control and make progress on and everything we do is really deliberately with that goal in mind to make a place where we’re collecting information that can be acted on sometimes you’ll see a rating like, how satisfied are you with the company’s Mission and some companies have better missions than others but companies can’t necessarily change that if you make widgets you make widgets and that’s just what you do or how satisfied or how happy are you with the CEO that can provide a lot of perspective but for us, it doesn’t translate into actionable enough information. So we’re always looking for that intersection.

Ursula Mead (Guest): Because this then creates a tool where people don’t even realize that they’re part of the change. So when you’re using Yelp, you’re using TripAdvisor. I don’t know if anyone uses either of those anymore to be honest, but when you’re using something like that, it’s so valuable to you as a consumer to be able to see this inside and see this data. You don’t even realize that by making decisions using that data you’re encouraging the whole other side of that platform to change how they’re operating. You may even put them out of business. If enough people make the decision not to go to that company, not to go to that restaurant, not to use that hotel or Hospitality provider. And that was really what we wanted to try to apply to our space in gender equity because as 50% of the workforce.

Ursula Mead (Guest): When women are making decisions with this data, they’re incredibly powerful. So we just had to find a way to get those insights into their hands.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That’s amazing. So a couple of follow-up questions, you’ve got Close to a decade of data now since the launch of InHerSight in 2015. Are there any rating categories that you’re collecting data for now that you weren’t a few years ago? What are some of those newer things that you’ve added that you’ve seen have positive action potential?

Ursula Mead (Guest): Yeah, that’s a great question. We do think it’s very important to evolve the data set as different needs emerge and that’s another thing that we see as valuable because a lot of times people will come out with their profile or what they track and stick with it, but the needs and the environment are constantly changing. So I mentioned the me too movement in 2017. That was really a big focal point and we had to think really hard about it. How do we play a role in the movement and how do we actually help women understand the safety of an organization in a way that

Ursula Mead (Guest): makes sense in the long run because this data lasts for a long time. So we added a metric then called employer responsiveness where we’re not asking women. Have you been sexually harassed at this organization? Because the no answer to that especially over time may or may not have any real relevance to a new woman evaluating that company depending on how that was resolved or if the same thing would happen to them.

Ursula Mead (Guest): So our employer responsiveness metric asks women how satisfied they are with how a company responds when issues like safety and harassment are escalated because you need to have comfort in the response of the organization that’s to be the thing that’s going to determine your experience more than whether someone else experience something at any given point in time. You need to know what the response will be. So that’s an example of a metric that came out of a change or a need that we decided to add to our platform that made sense within the framework of what we do. We also added a sense of belonging metric in 2020. This came out of a lot of focus groups that we did and that one was specifically from the women of color. We were working with and doing a lot of focus groups with and that had a lot

Ursula Mead (Guest): to do with feeling like you could bring your whole self to work. And that’s been a really important metric for us to watch. There’s one that I want to mention that isn’t new but I think deserves sort of a new look and that’s the learning opportunities and Learning and Development opportunities. That is a metric we’ve had for a long time, but that one is one that we have seen and flexibility and flex.

Ursula Mead (Guest): Work hours just jump to the top of importance because of again the changing environment where we see that, Learning and Development has been important, but when you’re in a hybrid work situation and opportunities for that have changed in their forms and their frequency. We’re seeing a higher and higher demand for companies to explain and showcase how they’re going to support your Learning and Development in this. sort of more fluid workplace environment that we’re in there’s actually another metric too, which was a post-covid. how satisfied are you with your remote work opportunities post covid where we had to split that metric because so much changed, of course when companies took a lot of their Workforce remote

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, so many good things to look for. I think it shows how important feedback is in general whether it’s receiving this public Feedback or doing internal surveys, and also asking the right questions that are pertinent to the time and the issues of each year. I mean covid really was a huge thing that happened in everyone’s lives. And if you just kind of ignore that and continue with your usual questions, you’re not gonna get the feedback that will drive that change.

Ursula Mead (Guest): And this data and those insights something else that I think a lot of companies miss about this is that when you’re on a broad platform like that that’s not really focused on a particular segment of your Workforce. There are a lot of choices that you have to make. What are we going to talk about when it comes to our employee value proposition? What are we going to focus on because you can only tell job seekers so much when you come to a platform like ours that is focused on a narrower segment of the conversations that an employer is having with our audience. Those are very different than they would be if you’re talking to job Seekers as a whole because women have these different priorities and needs and something that we really leverage our data for is understanding. What is the talent segment that a company is trying to resonate with and

Ursula Mead (Guest): Then telling them this is what’s different about this segment’s priorities. These are the actual benefits that are important to them or significantly more important to them. Are you trying to really resonate with women Tech? Because women in Tech were specifically software Engineers, they a prioritize a lot of our metrics differently than other groups or women in consulting or Investment Banking very different cultural aspects that they care about and they rank as important to them so we can really help the conversation and the connection between an employer and an employee become more meaningful using all this data that we have

Ursula Mead (Guest): one

Ursula Mead (Guest): right

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): You can actually provide in her site some of the things you care about and the platform helps guide you to companies that are more likely to be aligned with what you individually value which I think is just remarkable. But one question, I specifically wanted to ask you in here Ursula about in her site is what would you tell? An HR Manager h even a marketing director someone who’s just discovering in her site for the first time. Why should they be involved in the platform? And how do they do that?

Ursula Mead (Guest): So Matt, I actually think you are a perfect person to answer that question. What I would say is probably echoing a lot of what you would say in terms of why they should value this feedback and why they should engage with a platform like ours. the symbol story is that job Seekers do their homework and there are lots of ways to do your homework and our site is one of them and the

Ursula Mead (Guest): it is increasingly important for companies to think about Job Seekers experience doing their homework. Not just on one given platform or not just on their own careers page, but all of these different sources of information, especially the ones that become in cases like ours large enough be to resource for working women.

Ursula Mead (Guest): So there’s the basic benefit of reputation management and making sure that you understand what your employees are saying and what kind of impact that can have on your not just prospective employees, but also the employees working within the organization, but then there’s also that piece of embracing feedback as a tool to help you get better and our data I’d say above all other platforms is more balanced and useful in that way and it’s just a great tool. Even if you’re not going to manage your profile, and respond to comments having the conversation about what’s on our

Ursula Mead (Guest): Is why it’s on our pages is going to lead to richer better decision making when it comes to benefits conversations, how to structure employee resource groups and things like that.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And I don’t think any company ever gets to a point where they can just say, I think we’ve made it. We don’t need to worry any more about what people are saying or how they’re feeling like that’s never gonna happen because people change and employees come and go. You get new employees and the circumstances in the world change, too.

Ursula Mead (Guest): And you’re bringing up something that we talked to the women in our Network about quite a bit, which is that sometimes the companies that may have lower scores on our site but that are just really starting to focus on this area are some of the best places to join. So if you’re looking at a company that is early in its Journey, but very committed and really wanting to understand and figure out how to promote higher women. This is a really exciting time to join that organization.

Ursula Mead (Guest): On the other hand, you can see companies that sort of feel like they’ve checked all the boxes. They figured out they’ve decided okay things look good here and they slow their work on these issues and they stop listening and they decide we’re going to just go with what we have and let it stay that way as long as possible. Those are the worst companies to be joining because the investment in energy isn’t there and it’s not going to have that same momentum that is important especially for women who want to see and feel support from an organization.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Having employees be hired and then leaving and hired and leaving it makes a lot more sense to make the company a place where people will want to come and you get the right employees who want to work for your company because what you’re feedback is showing online is showing what kind of people will want to work at that company and then making it continually that place that they want to work.

Ursula Mead (Guest): Absolutely. Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And I was curious. I had a question about just how men fit in with this platform. And what’s your opinion around that and how useful it can be for them?

Ursula Mead (Guest): We love when men engage with the platform and use and use the ratings tool or engage with our editorial features. Even though the vast majority of our users are women. We do see a growing percentage of men and allies who prefer to choose companies that care about this. Some of my favorite linking posts there’s some funny ones from male Engineers out…

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.

Ursula Mead (Guest): who uses our side and talks about why they’re using our data to decide where they want to work. And…

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): that’s

Ursula Mead (Guest): it’s great and we love to see that but we also work with some companies because we have companies that are All different sizes and in all different Industries, sometimes we’re working with companies that are really early stage and they’re coming to us because they want to hire the first woman at the organization. They’re looking for their first female hire and they know it’s important. They don’t want to end up with 50 to 100 people and looking around and saying we’re doing something wrong here because our gender diversity numbers are so low. And so they’re the ones who are going through the ratings process and they’re evaluating themselves through that lens and saying, how are we doing across the things that are important to women and often we hear

Ursula Mead (Guest): I haven’t thought about this or we don’t have this policy in place. What do we do? We don’t have parental leave yet. And so we get to have these important conversations with them and say, when this is something for you to talk about in your profile and your benefits section say we’re in an early stage company. We don’t have this policy and place yet, but we are looking forward to developing it with our new employees and part of that work, so those types of things are all opportunities for awareness putting yourself in someone else’s shoes thinking about your company through a different lens, but it takes everybody to make this kind of

Ursula Mead (Guest): Change and do this kind of work. So we encourage men to participate and you can actually look at our data through a gender lens as well. So I mentioned that our scorecards have a lot of filters. They have demographic filters. So you can see scores from different perspectives. You can see them from career level or you can see them from age. You can see them from gender identity. You can see them from race and ethnicity. So that’s another way that we also show them sometimes that your perception of things is different than the women in your organization and that can be opening too for companies to see why men think this is going a lot better than it actually is the women who are assessing the same metrics.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I love that and as a guy myself, I’ve been using the platform for a long time and on the R side at two different companies helping the employer that I worked for see that data set for what it is on in her site and use it to make meaningful decisions to help improve the overall employee experience because you’re right The guys want to see that everyone is treated. Also,…

Ursula Mead (Guest): that

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I think that’s critically important. So I’m so grateful that we’ve been able to have this conversation Ursula and on a personal note, it’s been fun kind of continuing this conversation over the years as we’ve been able to connect on employee feedback and

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): talking about different ways of collecting and refining that feedback through different new mechanisms. I love some of those new scores and rating metrics that you’ve added over the years. It makes a lot of sense and that gives me so much even more confidence that InHerSight will continue to be the platform leading the way in the future because of the outlook that you and your team takes to evolving and growing and being an innovator in this space. So any final words before we wrap up,

Ursula Mead (Guest): I don’t think so except that the evolution of the changes of the platform that you described those all so come from people like you and the employers that we work for we hear from women a lot about what they need and what they want and we incorporate that but you have also been a really great source of feedback for us in those organizations because it is the people like you who understand the value of this type of reviews data that helped me the product. That we’re working on better. So we appreciate that.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Thanks Ursula.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So if you’re listening to this episode and you feel like you don’t have anywhere you can improve think again, right we all need to be constantly taking that feedback and over and over and over again and improving and using it to help help our companies and the employees just fill that Unity fill the block sense of belonging that you’re mentioning and gets those things that they value to input the work that they want that they can do the best that they can do as So thank you so much for all your thoughts today and just many good things. We really appreciate it. And for those who are listening to this episode, please subscribe and leave us your feedback as well because we want to continually improve and anything else you want to add Matt. Yep. We want more reviews of the podcast. So help us know how we can be better. Thanks everyone. Thanks a lot.

Ursula Mead (Guest): Thanks.