Marks & Spencer reviews

High turnover of team managers - you can get far higher salary for a similar role in an industry such as finance with better hours. Customer assistants don’t want to progress into management any more so they have been hiring externally which means those like myself who did rise through the ranks ended up on a much lower salary than those hired externally. Long hours, late night, early mornings. One store manager I worked for in the Edinburgh Central region was the most unprofessional person I have come across. They fostered a culture of favouritism, once started talking about how great another TM was in an end of year review. Believed a good way of delivering end of year reviews was to ask the Team Managers who they thought was the worst ranked to the best. Openly criticised other team managers in front of others. Was a really toxic environment which they created. However they were given award after award for “outstanding leadership”. Safe to say after a few months there I got another job in Finance for a far higher salary. I now earn more than some store managers! Limited progression. Visits from senior leaders were terrible, nothing ever good enough.

If you're technical, avoid M&S! You will most likely be managed by a sales or a marketing manager! Unbelievably bad! There might be 3 to 4 people across the whole org that are in technical roles and are decent! Every single one of them is buried with terrible requests from the sales and marketing people that out rank them by at least 2 levels. Since your manager or department head is most likely not going to be technical, they will recruit people at lower salary levels and since they lack technical members, they will just assign you the job of 3 people! Oh I must not forget, my role was advertised as remote. I confirmed with the HR and the department head that it was remote. I show up to work and they say you have to come to the office at least 3 days a week. I said I confirmed this was a remote role, they said yes it's remote since you can work from home 2 days a week. During the Christmas times, you will be asked to work in the stores stacking shelves! Believe me! Regardless of to your role, they will positively and collectively force you to show up to a store and stack shelves and work in the warehouse! READ THE FIRST SENTENCE OF THE CON SECTION!!!