Marks & Spencer reviews

For a large company in the prime of Central London, the salary for an MAA is absolutely shocking and terrible which doesn't help considering you're thoroughly overworked and treated like trash by certain colleagues & management alike. Discrimination and favoritism plays a big part within the Merchandising department, and you can be scolded at with ease just because your team member decides to nit-pick the most trivial of things against you. In short, it's easy & favorable for them to throw you under the bus for their best interest & gain, and there is no sense of teamwork or community because of this. The work culture is extremely toxic, predatory, patronizing and elitist to highlight a few things. From the get go you're under-trained by amateur or inconsiderate team members who have extremely high standards and expectations from you despite knowing that you don't have a lot of knowledge and familiarity when it comes to Merchandising & how certain processes function. For a large company in the prime of Central London, the salary for an MAA is absolutely shocking and terrible which doesn't help considering you're thoroughly overworked and treated like trash by certain colleagues & management alike. Discrimination and favoritism plays a big part within the Merchandising department, and you can be scolded at with ease just because your team member decides to nit-pick the most trivial of things against you. In short, it's easy & favorable for them to throw you under the bus for their best interest & gain, and there is no sense of teamwork or community because of this. Progression within the role is next to non-existent and even if you can progress it will take several months/years and after that you can't really move anywhere else. You're also discriminated against based on your level of understanding & general work ability, this also includes if you have a hidden disability.

- A real push from head office to bring back people into the office from lockdowns and remove covid safety measures to pre-covid times. This puts their employees at risk. - A real push from head office to force their head office staff to work in stores over peak 2021, ignoring COVID restrictions. This increased risk to their staff in store and head office. - Head Office culture values presenteeism and who they like. If you do not show up to every single meeting (regardless of your workload), you will not progress. - Lack of career progression: unless you plan to stay for a minimum of 5 years, you will not move up. - Bureaucracy: there is frequently many hoops you have to jump through to get anything done. Don't be surprised if day to day requests take up to 3 months to be completed. - Uncompetitive pay/no staff bonus: No staff bonus has been paid to head office employees since 2016/2017. Salary is well below market rates. As a result, there is frequent turnover in talented employees leaving. - Frequent turnover in senior management: in my time at M&S, I had 6 senior managers in a few years. This means that teams are always lacking strategic direction and confidence to take decisions. - Decision-making: as other people have mentioned, agreed that decisions are often made in conversations people have had in secret (and to appeal to higher ups) rather than being data-driven. As such, its very difficult to get managers to go on the record for fear of being held accountable. -Also in addition to the above - there is a reluctance to innovate and try new decisions as the business transforms if different from their historical legacy. I understand that they used to make £1bn profit but those days are gone. Because of this, parts of the business are not moving forward to adapt to retail in modern times by sticking to what has been tried and tested in the past. - Head Office has a problem with toxic office politics