TOXIC Work Culture - Anonymous employee L'Oréal Employee Review

2.0
Aug 19, 2020
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Discounted products at the boutique

Cons

I first want to firmly that everything I say in here it's true. This is my experience working at the Montreal downtown office in 2018-2019: Everyone has a feeling that something's "not right" with the work environment. The turnover rate is very high to begin with, and people working until 10pm is not unusual. They talk openly about ethics and diversity but they don't practice what they preach. It's all just for show to attract young talent. They mostly hire straight out of college because they are inexperienced with how toxic work environments are and they usually put up with it. I was pushed by a senior manager and HR to work the 10-plus-hour days without complaint. I tried to explain many times that it was detrimental to my mental health and my relationship at home but they defended the "L'Oreal culture" and said it had to do with the "competences" they wanted to see if I ever wanted to get a promotion. I remember feeling sad and depressed but they reprimanded me for not being grateful to be working there. As a disciplinary measure they extended my probation period and I wasn't eligible for a salary increase since then. When a coworker found me crying in the bathroom she said "Don't worry, I have seen so many people crying here at L'oreal". We even have a term for it at the office: "Burnout Leave". Besides that, I also witnessed strange incidents such as: -Black female employees are the less likely to have their contracts renewed and many of them are "subcontractors" which means they get paid less than permanents and don't receive any benefits despite working in the same office. -A female top manager had to take an extended medical leave after a very stressful period at work and when she came back she was already replaced by a male co-worker. I worked here for two years and never felt it was safe to go to HR or management when I had issues.

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Cons

toxic work culture and they don’t set up external candidates for success extremely tedious trainings required that have nothing to do with your daily job seems like they add processes just to make things look complicated when they are truly just launching a shampoo trainings were given sporadically and chaotically, and we’re not clearly shared to all new hires teams were backstabbing and threw each other under the bus in order to not get yelled at by leadership in meetings very catty Office politics and people whispering all the time they paint a fake exterior of inclusivity, fun, events, and socializing, but truly all of it is fake you have to really love cosmetics to work here or you will never fit in extremely marketing driven… R&D teams do not get any input or say and are just told what to do every day regardless of cost or feasibility Manager never had time to actually train me because everyone is so slammed packed with work workload is way too high per person Clark office did not have enough desks for everybody and booking was very annoying, regularly had to fight for desks extremely strict in office policy where they track your badge and you have to commit to today’s ahead of time to be in office forced socializing and events several times a month boring work but they make you feel like it’s the end of the world if a shampoo bottle doesn’t get launched marketing team quibbles over commas and apostrophes on product as if it matters had multiple meetings about different shades of white, and which white was the right white for packaging mandatory in person trainings that had nothing to do with your role Pay seemed high at first, but was absolutely not worth it once the role started

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