As a new investor, and ex electronics engineer, I was interested in Paul Scott's comments on XP Power (http://www.stockopedia.com/content/small-cap-value-report-tue-11-apr-2017-nxt-vcp-rfx-sepu-pam-tst-xpp-call-179526/) so checked them on Glassdoor (https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/XP-Power-Reviews-E24805.htm). The employee comments suggest that it is not a well run company and could lose some of it's key workers and potentially intellectual capital. How much weight should I give to anecdotal content like that when evaluating a company as a potential investment?
As always with these things, you need to put the information source in context. The Glassdoor reviews are a sample of 13 reviews between April 2013 and October 2016, of which 8 are 'hard' negative with a couple of middling and a couple of good reviews.
So that's a rate of 2.3 negative reviews per year. The last annual report disclosed total headcount of just over 1,500 employees plus who knows how many more contractors whose numbers are not required to be disclosed but who may have written a review on Glassdoor.
2.3 out of 1,500 is around 0.15% negative views, so I wouldn't see it as something to get exercised about, but you would need to know how that rate compares to other companies to form a more complete view.
Of course Glassdoor may not be a representative sample, but I would imagine people with a negative view are far more motivated to write a review on Glassdoor than those who have a positive or neutral view.
You will probably learn more from reading the 'Employee Engagement' page in the last annual review (page 22), although bear in mind it won't be an unbiased view.
