Home Depot Reviews in Atlanta, GA Area

Pros

Learning and teaching the employees is very detailed and enriching. They have some of the best learning modules and classes I've seen.

Cons

No schedules are always the same at the store level, but what retail is. It's difficult to reach out to higher managers because the chain of command is really driven hard.

Advice to Senior Management

Respectful and compassion is the number one way to reach your subordinates. The number one reason I personally have felt indifferent is because of the lack of respect for the younger generations, but in general this has always been a downfall of management.

Pros

- Pay is competitive with adequate benefits and great employee perks. Company shows appreciation for its employees.
- Opportunity to work with people from a variety of backgrounds (marketing, technology, retail, etc).
- Promotions are given to those who exhibit hard work and commitment.
- Each project directly impacts revenue, whether it be in-store or online sales.
- SSC facility provides great amenities (CVS, gym, bank, atms).

Cons

- Turnover is high, which is a poor reflection on the company as a whole.
- There is always talk about the ever-looming need for cultural change. Quit talking about it and make it happen.
- Politics and egos are quite heavy. Antiquated processes and workflows block efficiency and speed. Teams fight over who has control. Witnessed people stealing ideas and taking credit for their own personal gain.
- Pace of work and opportunity for challenges can be slow. One can easily spend months on a project, yet not really have gained any new skills. Lots of unnecessary busywork still needs to be done.

Advice to Senior Management

Make Home Depot a 'great' place to work, not just an 'ok' experience. Find ways to boost cultural growth, team collaboration, and employee innovation.

Pros

Decent benefits - stock options included
Competitive salary based on the industry/market
Lucrative quarterly bonuses
Casual work environment
Somewhat flexible schedule

Cons

Talent Management/Acquisition within Home Depot is very politically driven. Your success and upward mobility is based on who likes you within the organization not the work you do.

Upper management lacks strategic vision, strong leadership capabilities, the ability to build and motivate teams, ability to grow and develop teams, fairness and the ability to make sound decisions.

There is a lack of work/life balance within the organization. Employees are overworked and under appreciated. Responding to emails and working after 8PM is normal and somewhat expected.

There is also a lack of respect for employees who are not Sr. Manager level or above. If you're good at playing the "Blame Game" and "Being Thrown Under The Bus" constantly doesn't bother you, then this is the right organization for you to work for.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn to respect and support your employees.
Listen to your employees’ feedback and act on it.
Recognize employees for the work they do not because they are well liked.
Hold the management team accountable for the leadership, growth and development of their teams.
Work harder to create and maintain a positive work environment.

Pros

Great learning experience with lots of exposure to many areas of retail

Cons

Must be a self starter

Pros

Benefits, atmosphere, thats about it

Cons

Wages, hours are rotating, no room for advancement

Advice to Senior Management

Be more competitive with wages

Pros

Home Depot still offers such benefits as paid sick time, paid vacation, and health insurance. Opportunities to move up exist, though are limited. Pay for longtime associates is above industry standard. Schedules are somewhat flexible for students.

Cons

The last few years have seen steady declines in health benefit choices, schedule flexibility, starting pay, the size of annual wage increases, opportunities to move from part time to full time, and advancement opportunities, while job responsibilities and accountability for hourly employees continue to increase every year. Recent implementation of a new computer-based scheduling system has been used as an excuse to end flexibility in scheduling for full time associates in many stores, regardless of family obligations that have always been respected in the past. Planned implementation of a new "zone" system for associate placement instead of the current department system threatens to obliterate associate expertise in their assigned specialty and destroy customer confidence. Associates will be expected to know several departments instead of specializing in one or two, causing a "jack of all trades, master of none" effect. Associates will be spread too thin and will be unable to gain enough knowledge about any one department to effectively offer customers useful advice. I believe this will be a disastrous move for the company, will severely effect working conditions and morale among employees, and result in a rapid decline in customer satisfaction. As a customer-facing associate, I feel it is an ill-advised and potentially catastrophic move, and that this is not a good time to join this company if other options are available.

Advice to Senior Management

As a longtime associate, I have seen rapid decrease in morale as we move away from those oft-quoted but rarely practiced core values. Family obligations of full time associates are no longer respected by the ASDS or store manager (at least in my store), associates are being spread too thin as we are expected to cover more departments and train outside of our specialties, and new hires are frustrated by the lack of orientation before being thrown to the wolves. The new associate coaching system is a nice enhancement to, but a poor replacement for, the complete new hire orientation that once existed. We are being forced to choose between driving sales and serving customers (which has ALWAYS been the highest priority), and training, and are being punished for not completing extensive, time-consuming PK books for departments we don't even want to work in, when doing so would take us off the sales floor for long periods of time and leave our departments insufficiently covered. If you don't want unions to move in, stop talking about how bad unions are and start treating associates as if they are truly valued again. We are not stupid, most of us treat those anti-union videos as the blatant, insulting brainwashing attempt that they are, and we are fully aware that unions could return the working conditions, benefits, respect, and pay that we once enjoyed. It is in your own best interests to attempt to return to these values instead of chipping away at them and trying clumsily to put a positive spin on the decidedly negative changes being carefully introduced over the course of several years. Stop pointing out how lucky we are to have jobs, and how awesome the rather uninspiring success sharing program is, and make us WANT to stay. Return the emphasis to retaining and rewarding good, committed full time associates with respect, flexibility, and living wages, instead of hiring uncommitted, low-paid, short-term part time and temporary associates who will move on as soon as they find something better and will never stick around long enough to fully learn the business and attract customer loyalty with their expertise. Abandon the planned store zone system, associates who specialize in one department drive customer loyalty with their expertise; customers don't want mindless drones in an orange apron who can't offer much advice, they want experts who can help them solve the problems they can't figure out themselves. And finally, impress upon store managers and ASDS associates that the family obligations and health of their associates ARE important, and that treating us as though they are not will not be tolerated. The company managed to be considerate of full time associates' family-driven schedule availability for 30 years, and it worked pretty well for them. Allowing stores to destroy that relationship now will lead to nothing good for this company.

Pros

The benefits are the only reason to work there and they have went up in cost, So it feels like having benefits are a bad thing.

Cons

Lower pay and slow rate of increase is what pulls the motivation from employees. You could very well be an outstanding promotable employee but mgmt can only give out certain numbers of promotable reveiws which makes it hard to advance.

Advice to Senior Management

Take care of your employees, People would work so much harder and work for the company as well as spread good word about home depot if they felt compensated and appreciated

Pros

good people to work with, decent pay, plenty of hours to work, they will reward you if they think you are doing a good job

Cons

this company does not care about your personal life and will take every ounce of energy you have from you.

Advice to Senior Management

Be more personal to each and every person who works there, try to get to know them as a person more

Pros

The company is big, so there is a lot of opportunity to move around in your career. However, each group or department is compact, so it's not easy to learn what other departments do and how they fit into the overall organizational structure.

Cons

The company has frequent layoff and firings. So people are very tense and do not want to share information with others because that knowledge is their job security. Also, the culture is miltaristic. You should not question your boss, challege other's thinking or do things that are not in line with what others around you are doing. You need to conform and fast, or else you should leave. Company has a very high voluntary turnover too.

Advice to Senior Management

The culture needs to change in order to retain and attract the right talent. Do not hire people into non-management positions and yet expect them to drive change on a new initiative right away. Change needs to come from the top and management needs to initiate that change. Also, there need to be less ambiguity around the work you assign to your people. Good leaders are those who can communicate clear expectations and goals.

Pros

It makes you tough

Cons

You are considered "Orange Blooded Apron"...nothing more
Your creative ideas have no takers...you are encouraged to follow blindly what comes from top, even if most idiotic.
Do not expect Assistant managers to know...that's for you
Expect managers to run away from facing a demanding customer...that's for you to face
Brainwash on "HDTV - Home Depot TV" in breakrooms every day
Culture of fear.
Do you ever see the fear of loosing job... behind a smiling friendly face of the employee ?
No fairness in promotions or reward distribution
If you are working for many years & are paid a relatively decent pay, forget about getting a transfer. Your experience has no value. Intercompany transfer interview system is a joke.

Advice to Senior Management

Bring back human touch while dealing with associates, they are humans, not robots
Provide enough training opportunities to employees before "throwing" them on floor
Come up with proper policy for protecting employees from abusive customers while you hide away from them
Culture of fear must end
Stop creating Rubber Stamp Managers