The basics: about the Breakroom Rating

Everyone deserves a good job - and every job has the potential to be a good one.

So we’ve created the Breakroom Rating - a way of measuring the quality of jobs.

It’s been designed based on research with hundreds of employees and employers about what really matters to them at work.

Good frontline jobs

At Breakroom, we’re only focused on frontline roles.

The Breakroom Rating measures the quality of jobs for frontline employees: people working in industries like hospitality, retail, social care and logistics who don’t need degree-level qualifications to do their work.

What is a good job?

At Breakroom, we’ve created an objective and comparable measure of job quality based on retention: the better the job, the more likely someone will stay in their role for longer.

Finding a job they’re more likely to stick with isn’t just better for employees: it also saves money for employers and creates more productive companies.

How the Breakroom Rating works

The Breakroom Rating is calculated based on current employees answering a 30-question quiz about their experience at work.

The questions cover 3 categories:

1. Pay
2. Hours and flexibility
3. Workplace culture

We use an employees’ answers to calculate a score from 1 to 10.

When an employee takes the Breakroom Quiz they get a Breakroom Score for their job, so they can see how it compares to other frontline roles.

We combine everyone’s scores to give each employer its Breakroom Rating which is also a score out of 10.

The Breakroom Rating is correlated with higher employee retention

To show the relationship between job quality and employee retention, we took a sample of more than 200,000 Breakroom ratings of different roles across 6 industries and have shown a strong negative correlation between the rating and quit rate.

Put simply, the higher the industry average Breakroom Rating, the lower the quit rate in that industry.

That means our rating and measures of job quality can show you how to improve employee retention and save associated costs.

How do we ensure the Breakroom Rating is accurate?

We aren’t a traditional reviews and ratings site. The Breakroom Rating to be an objective measure of job quality:

• The Breakroom Rating is a tool to help employees understand how their job compares in the market, so everyone is incentivised to answer accurately
• We don’t force Breakroom users to take the quiz in order to access the rest of our job matching tools or other employer content. It’s up to them if then want to take the quiz or not, so they can be honest in their answers
• The more recent a rating, the higher weighting we give it. So an employers’ Breakroom Rating changes over time as its jobs change, making it a fairer, more accurate representation of the current quality of jobs
• We only use data from employees who say they are currently employed
• We have a sophisticated human and automated moderation system to make sure our data is as accurate as possible

How is the Breakroom Rating different from other rating and review sites?

The Breakroom Rating isn’t the same as a 1-5 star rating on traditional review sites because it’s calculated differently:

• The Breakroom Rating is based on a 30-question quiz that employees answer, covering pay, hours and flexibility and workplace culture
• The questions we use are based on the factors that mean an employee is more likely to stay in a job. It’s an objective measure of job quality, not a subjective 1-5 star rating
• Breakroom is only for frontline workers. Our quiz questions aren’t relevant to head office staff
• Since the Breakroom Rating is based on specific questions, we can provide employers with recommendations for how to improve their rating, jobs and therefore retention, saving time and money in recruitment and improving overall business outcomes

How do you improve your Breakroom Rating?

There are 3 steps to improving your Breakroom Rating:

1. Benchmark yourselves against relevant competitors

   We recommend you pick a set of relevant competitors to benchmark your Breakroom Rating against. A relevant competitor will be another employer who you are competing with for employees. It is also helpful to look at data on an industry level to understand how competitive you are within your industry as a whole.

2. Make sure a good range and number of employees have taken the quiz

   Breakroom only uses quiz responses from frontline employees and the more recent the response, the more impact it has on the rating. This ensures that your rating stays as up to date as possible.

   It’s a good idea to ask a range of frontline employees - from entry level staff through to managers - to take the quiz as a way of providing anonymous feedback about their jobs. Reaching out to employees at the important moments in their careers can be helpful, including new hires, recently promoted team members and long-serving employees.

3. Understand what is easiest to change and set a strategy

   The Breakroom Rating covers pay, hours and flexibility and workplace culture.

   There are two types of finding:

   • Policy findings, including pay, contracted hours and company benefits
   • Experience findings, including an employees’ experience of their team, manager and enjoyment in their jobs

   Breakroom provides you with comparative information on both, including downloadable data, allowing you and your HR team to identify areas you might want to work on.