Home Depot Reviews

Pros

If you have an idea at the Home Depot, you are usually listened to and management will consider your idea and it won't just sit in a PPT like it would at many other companies.

Cons

Not a great work-life balance. In retail, for the first 5 years, you only get 10 days vacation (unlimited sick though).

Advice to Senior Management

I usually enjoy my work at The Home Depot. The only issue I have are the vacation days for employees.

Pros

Currently the Home Depot is consistent with its message from the top down on taking care of the customer, instock and store appearance.

Cons

It's retail and if nights and weekends aren't what your looking for then don't apply. Based on where the store is located it can be a little more challenging.

Pros

Great co-operation between associates, customer service orentiated, pleasant atomsphere,

Cons

low pay, not enough help to perform tasks effectively,

Pros

its diff everyday, if you do a good job it does get noticed

Cons

can be boering, the supervisors are not that great

Advice to Senior Management

give me a raise

Pros

Innovative, team oriented, determined a dedicated peers, growth potential, and fun!

Cons

Political leadership environment in HR with power hungry VPs

Advice to Senior Management

Focus more on how the work gets done vs. it simply getting done

Pros

The other associated are very supportive, the company does provide a "Homer Fund" to help associated in need, the company tries not to have to lay off employees when things get slow, there is a recognition program called "Homer Badges" that provide compensation as you accumulate them - but the company seems to be trying to make awarding this harder and harder for managers and supervisors

Cons

advancement opportunities are very limited, they do not take your education and experience into consideration, they allow some barely-qualified people to remain in dept head positions, they are rigid about giving raises - only once per year unless you are the lucky 1 per district that gets one in between, they let too many people get away with "coasting" while not acknowledging/reward the hardest workers, they have a "VOC" in place that allows people to get their family and friends to go online and post raving reviews about them,

Advice to Senior Management

Pay people what they deserve instead of passing the buck and saying that you are at the top of the pay scale. Don't lead people on about possible promotions. Give credit to people for their education, experience and people skills and help promote those people over others who may have been there longer but lack true ability and talent.

Pros

I was at Home Depot for a very short time and my experience was pretty bad, but the pros are pretty obvious:
* well-known company--top retailer
* good networking (including many active employee-run groups)
* since it is a big company, I found that their automation and documentation (especially for HR processes) on the intranet was pretty good
* hypothetically, there is opportunity to move around to a lot of different functional areas (not sure how to make this happen...)

Cons

* management in my department was extremely critical of internal work and accepted the work of outside consultants without question. This is not only very demoralizing but probably detrimental to the business, since the consultants incentives are not strictly aligned with the company's goals.
* the mentality was "we are all super busy all the time and have to work all hours", even though it wasn't really accomplishing anything. Very much "look busy for the sake of looking busy", which not only will burn out your employees, but also makes them feel useless since the overtime work doesn't go anywhere.
* vacation, time off, benefits all suck: 2 weeks of vacation is new college-hire level, plus there were only 6 national holidays (par for the course in retail, but still crappy). Health insurance was crazy expensive for such a large self-insured company, and they won't cover spouses if they work for a company that offers health insurance--this left some new hires' spouses without coverage because it wasn't during their open enrollment and couldn't get on their employers' plan right away. Pretty harsh, and this conveniently wasn't mentioned until orientation.
* people without retail experience are looked down upon. I had a lot of relevant experience to my job function, but in service and financial sectors, which was essentially viewed as "no experience".
* personally, I had very bad experience with my immediate management. This varies, of course, but I would say this is a buyer beware situation and varies greatly by department.
* non-management employees are generally treated like children: I reported an error with my time sheet where I was overpaid and received no response from HR until a few weeks later when a COLLECTIONS LETTER was mailed to my home. THIS WAS SO RUDE, I was trying to do the right thing and report the mistake and offer to re-pay the over payment!!!
* I observed a heavy tendency towards preferring to hire from the outside rather than promote from within when senior positions were needed. This also may vary by functional area, but it didn't make me feel like I would be moving up very quickly or without fighting for it.

Advice to Senior Management

I don't really have any advice to senior management, except to make sure that the middle management that does your bidding is made of reasonable, sane human beings (in my experience, this varied a lot). As with any extremely large company, some people have great experiences, and some people have *awful* experiences, so just be VERY CAREFUL of the department that you go into and make sure that you really like your immediate manager/senior manager/director/senior director (and the ones around you--in case yours leaves).

Pros

Good work environment and adequate reviews. Community atmosphere. Promotes from within. Compliments hard working employees. Promoted myself, a female, to a male-dominated area of the store.

Cons

Male dominance throughout the corporation. Poor training efforts on the part of management and department heads. Sloppy employees. Poor recognition throughout the staff.

Advice to Senior Management

There needs more introduction to the computer training areas of the job. Follow-up with employees so that they know the inside and outside of the job.

Pros

They give a lot of hours, despite a lack of experience or prior work. I enjoyed the people that worked there as well, however strange.

Cons

It was unfortunate that they do not offer an employee discount because their prices are supposedly so low anyway. It also doesnt pay too great.

Advice to Senior Management

Make the workplace, and the store a more hospitable place. I think an image revamp would do home depot nicely. It is too cold.

Pros

decent pay compared to other cashiers elsewhere.

Cons

long hours and days.
rude customers expect you to know every single product in the entire store! and some employees especially those in the back just mock about when you call for them! being on cash is probably the toughest job at home depot.

Advice to Senior Management

communicate with your employees!