Pros
For the most part good quality and interesting products that I take a genuine interest in. Employee discount is very good. As a full time employee the benefits are reasonable compared to other companies, as long as the time has been put in with the company. My immediate management is fantastic, literally cannot fault a single thing. Me team is also amazing and not at all what I expect for a retail of this caliber. My hours remain reasonably consistent, again this is down to my awesome, immediate management and due to my being a full time. Generally my customer interactions are good.
Cons
There is far too much precedence on sales achievements. There is a lot more that goes into my job and my store managers job than sales. Although I understand the reasoning behind leading by example as well as the importance of sales understanding and monitoring for a retail job, I feel that our time is best spent focusing on the operational needs of the business for the good of our staff than the overbearing focus of our personal sales. I can’t lie, I feel it has been somewhat useful and a huge learning curve to have this enormous pressure to focus on this as well as my day to day, however I very strongly feel that is hinders my ability to perform well as an objective manager to my team. Over the last six months support has dwindled from higher management at the same time as standards being raised and crucial resources being tightened. I feel as though we are being punished for the overlooks made earlier in the year that are out of our control. Banishing extra payroll for shipments, staff meetings and even training! In the two busiest months of the year seems outrageous to me. On top of that, being able to achieve a pay rise is increasingly difficult and based on a singular aspect of the job. It’s seems if any employee comes into work and does nothing but sell they qualify, but those that come in day in day out working hard to meet visual deadlines, new hire tasks, inventory adjustments and so on get little compensational recognition for their efforts. I essentially skipped a year end review with potential for my nonexistent raise because I happened to be promoted months after starting, it seems those first few months counted for nothing. Honestly, I am very disappointed in the direction this company is going in terms of its employee values, especially coming from a company that prides itself on a fair and friendly employment. One minute we are all friends in this together and the next we are pitted against each other to see who can make the most money. There seems to be no distinction between locations when it comes to visuals or sales goals and getting communication through the ranks is practically impossible, despite being hounded about communication within our locations constantly. Our goals have supposedly been taken away for the two busiest months of the year (thanksgiving and black Friday) in the effort to promote team selling, which I am all for but where does that leave the all star incentives? No one knows because it hasn’t been communicated. Are those days worth of selling which we are so well taught to believe is our end goal now null from that monthly bonus? And the potential to make up any deficit we may have from a quiet November taken away? Or is there going to be a fair way to redistribute those earnings? Bottom line is, I feel that Earthbound is keeping up this presence of a friendly family atmosphere for their employees while quietly and more quickly depleting any opportunity for people in their employ to make any progress, financially or otherwise. At the end of the day this is a job not a lifestyle, and there should be more appreciation for the work put in besides sales goals and KPI’s.
