Interview With Danish Startup: Rating WorkPlace

Workplace ratings startups are starting to pop up all over the country and now apparently, around the world. Now, thanks to the internet, people who are interviewing for jobs get the opportunity to vet the employer as much as the employer can vet them.

Startups in the United States like California based startup Worker’s Count, allow employees to rate their workplace either by name or anonymously, in hopes that these ratings improve culture and quality of life at the work place. Some workplaces fare well on ratings sites, while others have their dirty laundry aired out amongst millions on the web.

Denmark startup Rating WorkPlace, functions similarly to Worker’s Count. Employees can rate their workplace for culture, benefits, job satisfaction and more. They can choose to do it anonymously or by name. Steven Moller, Rating WorkPlace founder, is hoping that by offering his service, people will no longer work in bad environmens.

We got a chance to interview Moller below. Please note that Moller is from Denmark and English is not his first language.

What is Rating Workplace?

RatingWorkplace is a website based on the concept that people can make reviews of their workplace by awarding stars and writing comments about it. People can see each other’s reviews and use the information to find out where the best jobs are located in Denmark and only chose well-rated workplaces when they are looking or applying for a new job. It is optional whether you want to be anonymous or not. Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds The founder of RatingWorkplace is Steven Moeller. I am from Denmark and graduated from the Copenhagen Business Academy where I studied service management.

Where are you based? 

RatingWorkplace is based in Skaevinge north of Zealand (Denmark) approx 30 km north of Copenhagen. What is the startup culture like where you are based? Many innovative and creative people come from Denmark. In 2009 the number of new businesses with one owner and no employees was at 14020 which is 0,25% of the entire Danish population who started a new business compared to many other EU countries this number is actually quite high.

What problem does your startup solve?

In Denmark we have a very high stress rate, the number of people who were affected of stress was in 2001 at 8,5% and has increased to 30,2% in 2008 where many of these occasions can be related to job dissatisfaction. Using RatingWorkplace, people now have the opportunity to see how it is to work in a company before they even have applied for a job. The companies can also use RatingWorkplace as a tool to increase the general satisfaction level by obtaining a complete overview of the areas within the company there need improvements.

What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?

Definitely to get reviews. In the beginning, not many wanted to be the first to make a review of their workplace. Now when people can see that RatingWorkplace is frequently used it has been like a snowball running down a hill when it comes to new reviews of Danish companies.

Who are your mentors and role models?

The right question for me would more be what is it that motivates me and that is the movie called The Social Network.  Therefore, to answer the question I would say that Mark Zuckerberg is my role model.

Whats one thing the world doesn’t know about Rating Workplace?

That RatingWorkplace is coming to UK in November.

Linkage:

Check out Rating Workplace here

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