GNC Reviews

Pros

Flexible work schedule
Employee discount
Decent benefits package
Improvement in training department
Economy is very poor, happy to have a job in general.

Cons

The P3 program- P3's products are not always the solution to our customers needs to say the least (fuction, ingredients, price, quantity, dosage).
Promotions/Gold Card- GNC offer their 'best" most "loyal" customers 20% off during a time of the month when prices are higher? (Promo#1)
Emails- If GNC wants to be an online business go for it but do not send my customers coupons that they can not use in store and complain about issues with sales.
Rankings- While this may cause some healthy competiton it also has cut down on communication between stores. Managers who are producing high KPI numbers are not wanting to coach other managers or employees in fear that they will be lower in the rankings.
Lack of training- Our customer expect GNC employees to know quite a lot.
Lack of incentives- employees are given a pat on the back for good performance...

Advice to Senior Management

Eliminate Cons listed above. I am aware that GNC is in the business of making money but I do believe they could take better care of the people who allow them to be in business(customers, employees).
Measure GNC brand as a KPI instead of P3s. Give your Gold Card customers a real discount. Rank stores only by regions and divisions; let us be untied and make a real team effort.

Pros

Commissions; these allow you to sometimes substantially increase your paycheck, based on which products you recommend to your customers. Also, it can be rewarding to know that you're helping someone make a good choice for their personal health.

Cons

Customers can be hard to deal with, especially if you get the know-it-all type that appears to want nutrition advice, but really is just there to show that they know more than the average joe.

Advice to Senior Management

GNC can be a great place to work, but having to ask each customer 6 or 7 different questions each transaction is a little awkward sometimes.

Pros

Very flexible and fun work. Also very informative. Education can be used and applied in real life.

Cons

Too much focus on the sales figures, although it is not too difficult to sell.

Advice to Senior Management

Find the hidden talent in your workforce, it's there and it can reduce your recruitment and training costs!

Pros

Interaction with customers is usually enjoyable.
Helping others with health is satisfying.
There is an oppourtunity to learn a lot of nutritional knowledge.
There is no sales cap and everyone has the oppourtunity to make promotional moneys or commissions.

Cons

There is a strong pressure to meet goals which are of course always raised which can sometimes be difficult.
It is a retail store so there is plenty of manual labor involved, sometimes way too much at a time, especially for managers.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure you are putting the best leaders in mngmt. positions instead of soley those best at sales because those positions require personal skills involving respect towards others in order for employees to want to meet goals and do all of the work that is required.

Pros

I worked for Nutra, the manufacturing division of GNC. Employee discount is great 40% and the majority of employees are absolutely wonderful to work with. Opportunities to get your hands on alot of different aspects of the job. Extremely interesting manufacturing process.

Cons

Nutra Manufacturing- GNC's manufacturing division
-discount is only honored in full at corporate stores
-facility is extremely lean & stressful with impossible expectations at times
-promotions are almost non existent
-compensation is benchmarked on "retail" even though this is a manufacturing facility. Pay is as competitive as it needs to be to retain talent
-Because of compensation it is often hard to find candidates with the skill set needed to perform the job effectively and efficiently
-Little to no budget for training/professional development
-Political
-Not much support from upper management or corporate on important issues
-reactive environement vs. proactive
-Everyone in the building has a chance at some kind of bonus except for support staff
-Corporate does not communicate well & the same perks offered are not offered to other divisions

Advice to Senior Management

There needs to be more development from within. There are brilliant employees working at GNC-Nutra and they aren't appreciated or being rewarded for it. Invest in your employees and your company will prosper. Compensation isn't everything, but if you can't offer that you need to invest elsewhere.

Pros

The commissions that are paid per sale in your very next check are wonderful. Excellent benefit package for fulltime employees. Autonomy and freedom from corporate HQ when you were doing an excellent job and your goals and numbers were met. My regional manager was never "breathing down my back" and this was greatly greatly appreciated. As a store manager I enjoyed hiring the right employees to meet our goals, which were rarely unrealistic.
40% employee discount is excellent!

Cons

Dramatic learning curve for product knowledge. There's alot to learn.
Advancement can be difficult given the rampant cronyism in upper management.
Customer returns can be a nightmare, some threaten lawsuits.
Some products can be ridiculously expensive, although not the fault of the company in most cases.
Loss Prevention doesn't trust anybody that works there. Instead of LP asking for your help, they play this guilty before innocent card, making employees feel like dirt.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay attention to who you hire as store managers. "Store manager in training" is a cheap copout to offer lower wages. With sales associates coming and going and upper management being shuffled around like trading cards, it's the store managers are really the heart of this company. Rewarding them with better incentives (besides a nickel and dime higher PM) like performance oriented bonuses would be an excellent step.

Pros

-fair pay
-great discount
-room for advancement
-most people working have similair interests and are interested in healthy living/working out/nutrition/etc

Cons

-working in the store can get very competitive and the associates are sometimes pushed too hard to sell products just to meet the goal numbers

Advice to Senior Management

- at the store level, managment should reconsider some of the goal numbers..not all stores have the ability/customer base to make such high numbers

Pros

Not too difficult. Pay can be decent. Discount on supplements if that's what you are interested in. Decent manager experience.

Cons

Can be boring. May go quite a while without any customers. Can be difficult selling products to customers due to prices.

Advice to Senior Management

Lower the prices of the supplements to compete with online companies and sales would increase. Allow opportunies for advancement

Pros

The only good about this job at GNC is the commission. With commission added into your paycheck you can pretty much average 2 or 3 dollars above minimum wage.

Cons

First and foremost, the ridiculous goals and demands this company expects is beyond ridiculous. They are constantly changing the goals and raising them higher and higher with no regard to the fact that we are in a recession and people simply do not have the money to drop 200 bucks on their overpriced products. Second, is the fact that they are entirely too micromanaged. The bad part about it is the RSDs and the SSMs are absolutely clueless. Their solution to not hitting your goals is a write up slip that says more training needed. However, when you ask these individuals for help, they don't show up, or try to pass the buck on to somebody else. Recently, the manager at our store got fired because of poor numbers. We live in an area that is considered to be the most depressed area in our state. People simply do not have the cash. However, we are expected to keep pace with other stores that are located in a more thriving area. Then they bring in a new manager that is more concerned with numbers in the store instead of the appearance and organization of the store itself. He's a major "company man" but his numbers and percentages aren't that much better than the previous manager that they fired. His way of doing things, he fired an individual for leaning up against the counter why doing a new planogram in the store. Within an 8 month time period, there has been a turnover of 5 people in this store. When I worked there, we went 5 years without a new employee and the store was still profitable and we all had a great working relationship with our customers. People trusted us to steer them in the right direction. Today, however, it seems that GNC and this staff currently in this store are more worried about ripping customers off, not caring about customers actual wants or needs, and basically robbing people blind of their hard earned cash through pushing towards things that they either don't want or they don't need.

Advice to Senior Management

To the leadership at GNC. You ought to all rethink your strategies. While you may be in a prosperous state for the time being. People are getting wise to your practices. The act of having your employees push products off on people that they don't need is going to come back and haunt you. People are sick of being bullied into Vitapaks and P3 products and will go elsewhere. It may not happen today or tomorrow but when it does I will be the first one standing there laughing as one by one your store close down.

Pros

The pay is competitive. The customer flow is non-stressful, and apparently the margin is good. There are some well meaning co-managers.

Cons

My RSD has little time for his managers, and has, so far, offered nothing but negative reinforcement. "You had BETTER do......" was heard several times during a bi-annual meeting. (not so subtle threats?). You are expected to sell exactly what the company wants you to sell, and you and your part timers are expected to work alone at the store. You are given stated requirements for staffing, that are impossible to meet. You give a part timer a key to the business after minimal training, offer them commission, and then constantly badger them to sell things that they won't get commission on!

Advice to Senior Management

Training. Training. Especially for upper management. Teach them how to have fun, and try at least a little positivity. Also, the "KPI's" are the only way you motivate your staff/ constantly holding the threat of losing their jobs over their heads. You won't have happy, motivated staff, this way, if you ask me.