Pros
Hospitality staff get free lunch.
Discounts.
comp for my role actually quite good.
25 days AL with option to buy 5.
2 hours lunch on wellbeing wednesday or you get this time back in AL if you cant take.
some roles offer plenty of WFH
10% employer match pension contribution
Cons
You are treated like a child in their first supermarket job from the moment you start. Ushered into an all day induction without the offer of using the toilet or having a coffee that takes all day filled with cringey activities such as talking to the group about how you're going to delight customers. Might be suitable for temp retail staff - but professionals in legal, IT, etc shouldn't be subjected to this.
Lots of the rules etc support this with lots of internal documents saying things like 'THE EXECUTIVES DECISION IS FINAL'. Lots of things need to be ran past them.
Very cliquey and backstabby environment in marketing and online. Projects based on opinion rather than any data. So many meetings and consensus based decision making, or decision making based on if the higher up is in a good mood that day. Structure is crazy and doubled up so theres teams fighting with different ideas of what to do, and often end up contracting external agencies to support their own department without any top-down guidance. Even the execs are doing different things contradicting each other and leaves the people below them who work together cross-department at stalemates.
A culture of overwork - senior team members sending messages on group chats from holiday (and specifically mentioning its been sent from the sun-lounger) is toxic and sets the wrong tone for junior staff. Managers make up their own rules on hours and enforce on their team.
Execs literally have their own part of the office that is all nice and wooden, nicer toilets, completely segregated from the staff.
Office is ancient, not sure if the monitors are even HD. squished in a very noisy messy environment with stock all over the desks, not enough space for everyone so your chairs are almost touching. Staff toilets are disgusting, they literally look like school toilets, seats constantly broken etc. 2 meeting rooms for all staff, so everyone is always on calls with each other at their desks.
No AC in many areas such as changing room feels like the victoria line. Only 1 tiny lift for the whole building. Everything is broken and mouldy in back of house areas and office spaces.
Processes are ridiculous, lots of 'computer says no', printing forms off and singing for requests. This has an impact on staff and 3rd party vendors alike - for example they wont process an invoice without a letter printed on company letterhead - just very old school. You can tell its a 300 year old company!
3.5% pay rise offered this year, but no compensation based reward scheme or proper progression planning. Bonus I think is just given as a retention. So no incentive to get better.
IT and tech is outsourced but all over the place with different companies leading to unsecure systems
Just very unprofessional and low-trust atmosphere.
