Pros

The internal relationships formed between staff. Most stores have a close-knit community of staff, who generally help each other out and form strong personal and professional relationships. Family members work together, people meet, go out, break up, get married, have children - often times with someone they've met whilst working at Woolworths. In this respect, there is a strong sense of community.

Cons

Staff, particularly those on salary, are expected to work far too many hours. Most Department and Store Managers regularly work 12+ hour days. This is not just by choice; there is tremendous pressure on salaried staff to work longer hours to keep wage costs tight. The company, and senior managers actively discourage work/life balance. For all store staff, this simply does not exist.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior Management - those above an Area, or Regional Manager level, are taking a short sighted view to try and continually raise the return for share holders. By continually cutting wage budgets, extreme pressure is placed on all Store staff. Woolworths has dire problems with succession planning, recruitment and long-term retention because of this wage budget pressure. If salaried staff had higher wage budgets to work with, all Department Managers would be able to work a more reasonable amount of hours per week. This would directly translate to massive saving costs in retention, particularly those associated with training new staff members. Don't just focus on the direct costs involved with hiring, the indirect costs prove far more costly in the end.