Loblaw Employee Review

I worked at Loblaw

Pros – - stable company
- good in-house food
- 10% employee discount

Cons – - middle management lacks people skills, either too abrasive or too evasive, some even appear afraid of dealing with their own direct reports
- senior management cannot make up their minds, 3 major upside-down re-orgs and numerous minor ones in the span of 5 years, undoing what they've spent millions on consultants to do, company structure is almost back to before the first re-org
- Old Boys Club, big time
- Top heavy management, e.g. 4 levels of VPs - VP, Senior VP, Deputy VP, Executive VP
- screwed up reporting structure as a result of the whirlwind re-orgs with people reporting into peers, e.g. SVP reporting into another SVP, Director reporting into another Director, seemingly random promotions and demotions to force re-orgs to work
- culture clash between old timers, people transferred from other regions and people they've employed from outside with more than just grocery experience
- capable employees suffer having to cover for the incompetent ones that they are unwilling to deal with or let go
- toxic office environment, crowded, noisy, no privacy (e.g. open concept where people would leave dirty lunch plates on your desk while you're away, coming back from meetings and find your chair gone routinely)
- never-ending disruptive office moves within the same building (personally went through 5 in 4 years amidst hectic 50+ hour work weeks)
- take the Top 100 Employers award with a grain of salt, not to say there are not good companies on the list, but for Loblaw, it's a joke internally, any company can apply and fill in their own forms on credentials

Advice to Senior Management – Although fast change is inevitable in any corporate environment, it helps to provide some sense of stability for employees so that they don't feel lost, compromising performance and morale. Also, any change takes some time to stick, stop making knee-jerk reactions. Pay more attention to people's skills, re-organizations that randomly puts people into new jobs that they don't have the aptitude for takes a toll, both to the company and other employees. What you think you saved on severance, you pay in productivity/turnover in good employees and ultimately profitability.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend