Pros
Gallup does a great job investing in good office locations. They have a sprawling campus in Omaha, much like a university and the spacious offices in DC are housed in a historic building. Definitely a pleasant infrastructure to look at.
Cons
The problem is, the people who make up these nice-looking offices are generally some of the lousiest people you will ever encounter in a workplace. They have gotten so sinister that to combat the honest, though negative, reviews you see here on Glassdoor, Gallup management forces associates to write “positive” reviews as part of an employee’s performance plan. Management will likely counter that this is not “forcing” but you better believe if an associate doesn’t write something glowing and upbeat on Glassdoor, they will suffer from vindictive bosses as a result. For those reading these reviews, please skip over the very short, Stepford-like positive reviews where not much of substance is said except for “I’m really fulfilled at Gallup!” Having worked there from the inside for several years, I can assure you that those reviews are phony. Now for a real review. Gallup was once a great brand. Founded by George Gallup in the 1930s, the Gallup Poll had a sterling reputation for being the “gold standard” in polling. When the current CEO Jim Clifton bought the company with his family in the late 1980s, he actually did a great deal of good by expanding the Poll and bringing in consultants to develop work on employee engagement and customer engagement. These “knowledge centers” made Gallup very profitable for a good 20 years or so. Sadly, Jim Clifton and his family’s management style, along with minions brought in over the years as “friends of the family,” are what ruined Gallup. Those who developed the scientific research were driven away one by one, due to the short-sighted and obnoxious ways the company leaders ran things, and those in charge of the Gallup Poll stopped innovating. The Poll went from being the gold standard to getting a few electoral cycles wrong. Famously, the polling unit bungled the 2012 presidential race and that’s what caused Gallup to get out of presidential polling and to severely curtail their polling in general. I was there to witness all this, and it was devastating. If a company hires Gallup because of its allegedly accurate polling and then Gallup stops doing polling because it internally doesn’t have confidence in its own pollsters, then you have a real problem. Watching Gallup leave polling, and not just for the presidency, must be making George Gallup turn over in his grave. Add to that struggles with the US government, where Gallup had to pay a $10 million fine and agree to be monitored for several years, and it’s an uncomfortable place to do business. What do you have left? The touchy-feely thing called “Strengths Finder,” which is light years away from what Gallup was founded on and even far away from the glory years of employee and customer engagement. Strengths Finder is the pet passion of the CEO, but it lacks any kind of scientific rigor or discipline and is more equivalent to studying your horoscope or astrology. It’s not “real,” but it does make people feel good. Back to the people at Gallup. There are some good associates there for sure. But I’ve never seen such a culture of nastiness before anywhere. Gallup leaders relish gossip and internal politics. Top leaders would say they are developing you at Gallup but then if the family decides they don’t like you, you will be abandoned in a heartbeat. They say when they hire you, “let’s change the world” but almost immediately you are left to fend for yourself, with no support, and you never come close to changing anything, much less the world. Furthermore, I’ve never seen a place where people nurture personal vendettas and grudges for so long, holding onto their angst toward fellow employees and delighting in punishing them if they get the chance. Yes, it is that bad. After a while I concluded all my job was about engaging in office political skirmishes. With weak leadership at the top, a landscape of not-very-bright but shrewd managers have popped up, especially in Washington, and have created this toxic culture where no one has incentive to work hard or stay very long. There is more longevity in Omaha because Gallup is a big employer and there isn’t the multitude of employers like in the bigger cities. But in Washington, the turnover is legion as the worst people are promoted and make the day to day miserable for those foolish enough to sign on there.
