Is Rate Your Nurse Leader in Our Future?

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, FAAN

I received an interesting request from one of our graduate students last week.  She was looking for an alternative to a required class because she was concerned about the professor’s negative ratings on the Rate My Professors site.  Ironically, this request came shortly after I attended as session on Rateocracy: When Everyone and Everything is Rated at the World Futurist Society Conference.  The presenters Robert Moran and Christopher Carfi made the point that we are rapidly moving to a future where everyone and everyone thing will have a numeric rating that is transparent and updated in real time.

The Rise of Rateocracy

With the rise of the internet, consumers have now been empowered to rate products, endorse services and post complaints in forums that are widely viewed such as on Amazon, Tripadvisor, eBay, Yelp and Angie’s list.  Job hunters and employees can read and rate their employers on sites such as Glassdoor.com.  On Facebook, users can endorse a product or person by “liking” it and on LinkedIn, your skill in certain areas can be endorsed by others.  These are ratings are real time and have led companies to be very concerned about their online “reputation management”.

According to Moran and Carfi, these trends are just in their infancy stages.  They see the trend toward Rateocracy as a game changer for both organizations and their leaders.  At this point, they acknowledge that on many of these sites, there are not enough comments or ratings to be statistically robust.  On Rate My Professor as an example – many faculty complain that only the very satisfied and dissatisfied tend to evaluate their professors.  Over time with more users, this data could become much more representative and trusted.

Implications for Nurse Leaders

Is Rate Your Nurse Leader in our future?  There is a very strong likelihood that we could see a site like this develop that not only rates the healthcare organizations but individual leaders within the organization.  On Glassdoor.com today, you will see comments about the leadership of companies.  As nurse leaders, this could force us to become much more transparent in our practices, better listeners and stronger communicators.

Moran, R. (2012)  Rateocracy and Corporate Reputation.  World Futurist.  May-June 2012.