How to Leave Employer Reviews on Vivian

Nov 11, 2021

The team at Vivian is committed to transparency and is dedicated to making your job search easy and informed. We were the first to post pay with ALL our jobs, and we ask employers to give us as many details as possible about each job post to fulfill that promise of transparency. Vivian supports nurses and healthcare workers and advocates for them in numerous ways. We want to continue collaborating with nurses and healthcare professionals to build more accountability among employers in the healthcare industry. Our new employer pages are the next step in this journey. We are collecting reviews and feedback from the people who matter most: the healthcare workers.

Why Employer Reviews Are Vital to Our Community

Let’s be honest. We’ve all worked for some amazing agencies or healthcare systems, and we’ve also had experiences with some that could use a little improvement. Sharing these experiences not only helps other healthcare workers who may be considering a particular employer, but it also helps change the agencies and healthcare systems themselves.

Employer reviews hold agencies and healthcare systems accountable for the good and the bad. Negative reviews keep the recruiters and agencies honest and let employers know what they could do better. Positive feedback gives kudos and lets agencies and recruiters know what is working right within their processes.

If you’ve ever had something go terribly wrong with a contract or felt like you were scammed – the employer review page is the place to tell the world about it. Or, if you were you are really happy at your healthcare system and/or with your recruiter/agency, and want to give them some love, leave a review so other nurses and healthcare workers know they are in good hands.

You can leave a review for the healthcare systems, recruiters, agencies and employers that you’ve worked for, whether it was a staff or travel nursing job.

We want to build a transparent and reliable resource for healthcare workers to access when they are looking for their next job. Sure, you can hop on Facebook and ask for people’s opinions- but we all know the comments can get a little out of hand and there is a lot of ‘extra’ info posted that isn’t super relevant to the original question. On our review page we let you rate the employer from 1-5 stars and have a space for free text where you can praise or criticize the employer in your own words. The more reviews added, the more reliable the information, so add your review or reviews to share with the healthcare community.

How to Leave an Employer Review on Vivian

Find the ‘Resources’ page on the site or ‘Resources & Blog’ tab app, and click on ‘Employer Reviews’. At the top of the next page there will be two categories at the top of the page that say ‘Staffing agencies’ and ‘Health facilities’. The staffing agencies are the travel agencies that post travel contracts on our site. The health facilities are healthcare systems. You can use the search bar at the top of the page to look for a specific employer, system, or facility.

Once you find the agency or employer you are looking for you can click into their page by clicking anywhere in the box or on the green ‘Learn more’ button. When the employer or agency page opens, scroll down past the list of recruiters and find the ‘+Add a review’ button.

You can choose to leave an anonymous review by checking the ‘Review anonymously’ box under the recruiter name drop down. If you are leaving a negative review but still want to be eligible for employment by that agency or healthcare system, it may be wise to remain nameless.

This is also a perfect place to start if you are looking for a review of a potential employer or if you are just trying to find a great agency to work with! You can use the search bar if you know what you are looking for, but if you are browsing there are some great tools to help you find a reliable employer. First, you can filter the posts by job type (travel, staff, per diem or local), discipline and specialty supported (for example, if you are an respiratory therapist, you want to look for companies that employ RTs, not just RNs), locations, and benefits. You can also sort the list by our preferred partners, response time, and by the top paying agencies.

What to Include in an Agency Review

The relationship between a nurse and their recruiter, or any healthcare worker and their recruiter, is important to highlight. A recruiter can make or break a travel assignment, and a good recruiter is invaluable. In an agency review you should include whether or not the recruiter was helpful and knowledgeable about the travel nurse process, as well as the actual job. Other questions that can be answered in a review are:

How was their response time? Did you have to wait days to hear back or did you usually hear back from them within a few hours?
Were they familiar with the cost of living in the area of the travel assignment? Did they provide any resources or suggestions for housing?
Did they help you with the onboarding process? How did that go? Any issues with onboarding or special requirements?
Was the pay fair, and were they willing to negotiate? (Bonus tip: Use our salary tool to make sure you are getting paid enough compared with others in your area!)
Was the recruiter professional in their communications? Did they let you know if they would be out of office and who was covering for them?
Did the contract accurately reflect what you were initially told regarding the pay package/shift/hours per week/contract length?
Did you feel like the recruiter ‘had your back’ and was there for you when you needed them?
Were you happy with the overall experience? Did the assignment go smoothly?
Did anything really good or really bad happen with the recruiter?
Is there anything else you would like to share? Sometimes small details are important

Some of these questions can be answered after initial contact, or after you first apply for the job on Vivian, and some are better answered towards the end of a contract, or after an assignment is completed. You can leave more than one review if necessary. You can also leave a review for any recruiter that has ‘ghosted’ you, or never replied to your application on Vivian. You do not need to have completed a contract with the agency to leave a review.

What to Include in a Healthcare Facility or System Review

Reviews on healthcare systems can be helpful to healthcare professionals that are looking for any type of job. As a staff employee, you’ll have a unique perspective of the employer that you’ve formed over time. While as a travel or contracted nurse, you may have only been there a short time, but it’s usually long enough to get an idea of the vibes within the facility and how they practice within the healthcare industry. Reviews for healthcare systems or facilities should focus more on the culture and work environment and how it affects the professionals employed there. Asking yourself these questions can help you write a great and informative review:

What type of facility was it? (Teaching facility, for profit, not for profit, clinic, etc.) What was the name of the facility? What unit did you work on?
Did you have personal autonomy? Or, is it a very “I’m the doctor, you are the nurse, you do what I say” type of environment?
Did the managers and administrators support nursing and treat you with respect?
Is nursing included in decision making about changes to systems and processes within the hospital?
What was the work environment like? Is there a strong sense of teamwork or did you feel like you were on an island working alone?
Is there ancillary staff available? CNAs? Secretaries or administrative assistants? Respiratory therapists? PT/OT? Phlebotomy?
If you are ancillary staff or allied health, how did the nurses treat you? Was it a group effort, or did you feel under appreciated?
What are the ratios like? Give specifics here. Nurses and allied health professionals can quote how many patients they were expected to care for per shift.
How was staffing? How often was the unit short staffed and by how many nurses?
Are there opportunities for career advancement or some sort of clinical ladder program?
What is the pay like? Did they offer incentive bonuses for extra shifts?
How were the benefits and what was offered? (tuition reimbursement, health and dental insurance, 401K, HSA/FSA etc.)
What are the floating requirements? Were you floated a lot? To which units? Was this in your contract or expected if you were a traveler?
Were you treated nicely as a travel nurse? (If applicable)
What charting system did they healthcare system use?
Were you happy working there? What would you change?

When reviewing a healthcare system or facility it’s important to include if you worked there as a traveler or as staff. If you are a travel nurse reviewing a facility, it’s best to wait at least a month before leaving a review. We want you to have an accurate view of your workplace, and sometimes the first few weeks of a travel assignment can be pretty hectic as you try to adjust to the change in workflow.

The more reviews there are, the more informed decisions we can make as a community built by healthcare professionals. Vivian wants to put the power back in the hands of the nurses and healthcare workers that serve us, tirelessly. We are doing this by increasing transparency across all aspects of the job search and building tools like the employer review page and salary tool into the site. Vivian supports the professionals that are the foundation of the healthcare industry and we want to ensure you are satisfied and happy wherever you are working.

Elevate your career by exploring the latest job openings from top staffing partners on Vivian Health today.

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Rachel Norton BSN, RN

Rachel Norton became an RN in 2007 and has been part of the Vivian team since 2019. She has always worked in critical care, and spent the first 12 years of her career working in a surgical neuroscience trauma ICU. She's also worked as a flight nurse, started travel nursing in 2010 and continued working in the ICU until joining Vivian full-time in 2022. As a user researcher, Rachel advocates for healthcare workers to help bridge the gap between employee and employer expectations.