‘Happy at Work’ Asks: What is Blind?

The “Happy at Work Podcast” explores what it takes to create a positive workplace. Hosts Jack Kelly, a Forbes senior contributor and the CEO of WeCruitr, and Harvard professors Michael McCarthy and Dr. Tessa Misiazek explore how CEOs and leaders can create an amazing professional experience and manage teams successfully.

Kyum Kim, Blind’s chief business officer, and Rick Chen, the director of public relations at Blind, explained how more than 5 million verified professionals anonymously share advice, provide honest perspectives, discuss company culture and discover relevant career information to break down professional barriers and inspire productive change on the professional social network Blind.

Below are some highlights of the “Happy at Work Podcast” featuring Blind. You can also download or read the complete transcript.

What is Blind?

Blind is an anonymous community for verified professionals. We have over 5 million users worldwide, and it’s a place where people can have transparent discussions… We give people the freedom [to be] honest about work.

— Kyum Kim, Blind Chief Business Officer [1:16]

How have different companies handled the COVID-19 pandemic?

Companies had to make very, very tough choices. They had to make choices to let people go; they had to make choices to shut down the offices, and those are big changes… We saw… [varying] empathy [among] companies.

[Airbnb] let go [of] thousands of employees, and what they did was they extended their medical insurance; they paid a very generous severance, and they let people keep their laptops… They also communicated [the layoff] in a very humane way…

If you’re really empathetic about these kinds of things, it creates an employer brand, and that’s much stronger than anything…

Employees are actually actively looking into what… companies are doing, and when they do [things] the right way, they appreciate it… Airbnb employees, even though they were let go, they’re willing to go back, whereas [at] other companies, [people] just didn’t feel like they were treated the right way, so they said I would never work for this company again.

— Kyum Kim, Blind Chief Business Officer [6:09]

Do managers or executives use Blind?

… When I’m interviewing [candidates to work at Blind], they tell me: my executives are looking at Blind… usually before all-hands [meetings].

So when you’re going to all-hands, as an executive, even myself, we’re kind of anxious and sometimes terrified because you never know what the employees are going to ask you. But, if you go on Blind, people are already talking about what matters to most of them…

Now, we see a lot of executives going on Blind before all-hands and actually scrolling… together in a group and having debates… [The executives] prepare themselves for those kinds of questions… I’ve heard this story from multiple companies in the [Silicon] Valley, in the East Coast, mostly in tech companies, where we have a lot of traction.

— Kyum Kim, Blind Chief Business Officer [8:38]

How do you avoid “cancel culture” and canceling certain employers?

We have two pillars of decision-making processes at Blind. The first one is… to obviously increase the amount of communication, and that’s through anonymity. If you’re anonymous, people will say more things; they will be more honest, and they will be more transparent…

The other really important part is the sustainability [of the community]. We want people to keep… using this forum, and if it’s a toxic forum, people will leave… We encourage people to look at each other’s posts and make sure you… [add] value to everyone…

On Blind… we encourage [you to] tell your story, like, how did you grow up? And what is your belief system? How was that built? And when people start talking about it, that’s when people connect and try to and start to understand.

I think people should be doing that much more, and that’s what we encourage on Blind… We… just [let] people be honest on [the] platform and be themselves, and I think that’s going to solve a lot of problems out there.

— Kyum Kim, Blind Chief Business Officer [11:03]

We don’t have a bias towards employees or employers like other employer brand profiles out there might have.

Unlike other anonymous communities, we also point to, hey, this is an ongoing, true existing problem or concern among your employees, and so that context really prevents people from trying to “control the platform” or the discussions or trying to run away.

Because chances are, if they’re [employers] seeing it on Blind, it’s not isolated in Blind. They’re probably seeing it on employee engagement surveys. They’re seeing it in exit interview data. And so we’re actually seeing companies own up to their shortcomings from data on Blind because Blind is just another data point. It’s not really sitting on its own kind of path there.

— Rick Chen, Blind Director, Public Relations [14:42]

Is Blind really anonymous?

… Our product is about anonymity, and… that’s the ethos of the company. And that’s why we can’t identify these people [Blind users]…

We encourage those kinds of [anonymous] discussions [to] come out because it may be uncomfortable [for employers], but it adds context.

— Kyum Kim, Blind Chief Business Officer [16:36]

How should employers think about their return-to-office plans?

… I think the companies that have had to change their policy over and over again, what they misunderstood was, they understood this as office versus remote… when employees… actually [want] autonomy; they wanted the freedom to choose between remote or hybrid… And the vast majority of people who are not satisfied with their company’s remote policy said they’re [going to] leave [their jobs].

— Kyum Kim, Blind Chief Business Officer [31:24]

Has the definition of a great place to work changed over time?

I think the kind of stereotypical or first assumption is that compensation and career development would be the highest kind of indicators of how well a company is perceived. In fact, we found it was things like diversity and inclusion, a sense of respect for the vision that the leadership team has communicated, certainly career development is part of it, but the thing that has also recently… become a kind of stronger signal is work-life balance…

Before the [last] year and a half… the correlation between work-life balance and being a top-rated company wasn’t as strong as it is now.

— Rick Chen, Blind Director, Public Relations [36:45]

Do different generations view the workplace differently?

I’m not quite confident that generation is as strong as an indicator as I think what is most popularly kind of assumed… We’re seeing… directors and vice presidents saying work-life balance is more important, and these are the kind of professionals or people at a company that notoriously have the worst work-life balance, right?

… We’re seeing this… greater universality of what it means to be happy at work… It is these common trends of actually, maybe it’s okay if I disconnect out of work hours, right, and we’re seeing some countries outside of the U.S. even mandate it into law, and that certainly spans across generations.

— Rick Chen, Blind Director, Public Relations [39:08]

Are there new trends in the workplace that we haven’t heard about?

… The job market is… a market, so there’s obviously a supply and demand, and we’re seeing increased supply and increasing [demand]… and that’s why the job market has been so vibrant…

First of all, you can now work from anywhere, so you can be part of the workforce, regardless of where you live. And the second [trend] is, because of COVID, you don’t really have to go into a physical lecture room or classroom to learn… you can actually go online and learn about… how to code, learn how to do marketing. And [that education is] as valid as… the education that happens in person.

We’ve seen a lot of people who say they’ve come into this white-collar workforce, and they used to be in the services industry or another industry.

— Kyum Kim, Blind Chief Business Officer [41:25]

What advice would you give to employers to foster employee loyalty and employee engagement?

… Blind is an opportunity to listen; it’s an opportunity for you to really get into the conversation. And these conversations are not the conversations you can actually have with your employees one on one because, obviously, as an executive, I’m on the company side, if I go to an employee and ask them, how do you think about the company, they’ll never be honest with me. But they will be honest with their peers…

We want to create a feedback loop; we want to be able to say that because employees are empowered to speak honestly on Blind, companies are now listening. And [employers are] actually implementing their findings and insights to their culture, their company policies…

[It will also] encourage people to participate more because now our users and people who use Blind are going to feel more empowered to speak up. And I think that’s going to actually create a loop [that] benefits everyone.

We want to play that role in the middle, where we just make everyone happy. And that’s the topic of this podcast, a happy workplace.

— Kyum Kim, Blind Chief Business Officer [46:17]