Pros

Friendly people and great discounts. Great merchandise!

Cons

Communication is not good. Some of the store senior management don't seem to know what is going on and feedback is sorely lacking.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to figure out how to develop tools to manage the business. For instance, am employee that has been gone for 4 months is still being scheduled to work after mgt has been told she is gone repeatedly.

Pros

i have a flex schedule, work with decent ppl , and health insurance.

Cons

cut hours, cut staff, unreal goals=great things ?????? for the most part i enjoy working for kohls the expectations are getting unreal . unload a truck and have all the merchandise out in 4 hrs ? sure ! mark all the clearence in store all departments and have it 90% completed and sized and buy percentage by the end of the day with a team of 5 ppl . yeah right !!! deal with the horrible returns and code 7's and make sure the strikepoints are correct cause some pant load from corp. office is flying around in the kohls jet and might come in and see ...gasp.......there is no staff ! and the store looks like you know what. cant do that oh no !!! 3 different mgrs telling you to do 3 different things. oh my gosh changing the sale every other day !!!!! what a waste of time and very "green scene" . i hate the power hours on sat afternoon when the customers get frantic cause there missing out on the "big" savings which is usally only a $1.00 and they herd themsleves to the check-out where the one person there calls for back up which is you and then your stuck blabbing about kohls charge card . and then you go back to your dept which is trashed. its fun ! ....really ! :)

Advice to Senior Management

my advice to the corprate suits would be work in store and you can see first hand how your budget cuts and reduced staff is working out. you might not be sitting so pretty in the future.

Pros

At the location I work at, the people are great and this in and of itself is a bonus. While the pay for hourly employees like myself is not very good, the availability of health insurance and other benefits is immensely helpful and appreciated.

Cons

Some of the management seems unwilling to get down and do nitty gritty floor work themselves when lowly hourly associates are overwhelmed with other work, though others are great about it and lead by example, which in turn makes me personally work harder. Some of the management will shower you with praise, while others are snarky and will not give you the time of day. Hourly pay is not commensurate with the amount of effort put in, especially as the holidays approach and lines get longer.

Advice to Senior Management

For the most part, you guys are doing well. I know you have very little latitude with regard to the payroll and are often forced by corporate to work with a skeleton crew, so believe me, the praise that is handed out is appreciated even if it does not alleviate the workload much.

I DO NOT like to push charge cards on customers in this economy, and customers DO NOT like me to do it. Come up with other measures to judge the quality of an associate's work. As a customer service rep, I am judged by my credit numbers, though I have almost zero opportunity to actually even process a sale.

And last but not least... praise is great, but a raise would be nice every now and then. "Good job" doesn't pay the bills.

Pros

Your fellow associates. I work with a group of really hard working, dedicated and unappreciated associates. We are like a family and really care for each other.

Cons

Work load. The expectaions of the assocaites keeps increasing but there are never enough people in the building to complete the work load.
Ridiculous return policy. We take back any and everything no questions asked.
Extreme pressure placed on associates to get credit. Our stategies border on harassment.

Advice to Senior Management

Corporate needs to come back down to earth and work in a local store for a week. Then they might get an understanding of the challenges that associates and management are faced with on a daily basis. Your goals are unrealistic and makes for really poor morale. We used to offer really good customer service when there were enough associates in the store. You want to offer services like a specialty retailer, but you are staffed like Wal-Mart.

Pros

It's a retail job--it is what it is. Okay for part-time extra money etc. Not a place to advance unless
college degree.

Cons

As a customer looking in, I see over worked sales people with no control over fitting rooms
because of no policy on Kohls part or maybe just my store. Training is next to nothing. Hopefully
when you have to do something you've never done a co worker will show you how if your lucky.

Advice to Senior Management

Use your hours wisely when scheduling so you have enough staff at peak times.

Pros

Salary was adequate to lure me away from another position.

Cons

Where to start with this company. Lacking in direction and leadership. This place is going down hill
in light of the current economy. Very unrealistic/ unobtainable expectations. Not enough staff and will not hire or provide hours to get the jobs done.
In my area Kohl's will not even compensate the needed sales associates, cashiers etc. adequately
so all the staff leaves for the nearby stores that pay at least $1+ more an hour. Even after they reviewed this and found the huge gap in pay from the competition refused to make any adjustments. So this makes it difficult to obtain and maintain assoc.
Upper management constantly changing and implementing new policies for anything and everything. Seems that the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. Constant e-mails, confrence calls and requests for info(to be written as a report/plan ) to five different disciplines wanting the same info. Such a time waster sitting on a cc listening to the regional vp blab about some policy/thought they will be changing in several days. In the meantime there is not enough staff and ads need to be set, there are not enough cashiers and a whole hoard of customers wanting to be checked out, clothes thrown all over the store and more things occuring than staff in the store to even physically handle.
In the meantime when I try to pin down my general manager with a concrete idea of how to get their next unrealistic expectation done. The only great pearl of wisdom he can ever come up with is "whatever it takes to get the job done". Good grief! This sounds like a complete vent at this point and it is I'm so physically exhausted at this point, I'm working 16 hours a day often 6 days a week. This job is not worth it! Needless to say I'm looking for another job, I will gladly accept less pay at the next job if that is what it takes just to get out of this place!

Advice to Senior Management

Look at the big picture, upper management should be able to communicate and problem solve issues together before sending it (communication} down the line and and then some very obvious issue with someone else was overlooked and now everything is being changed again.

Pros

There's a complete training system.

Cons

Managers ask me work a lot of hours after I told them I have school. And school was my priority. They don't care about my situation and said if I complain then maybe I shouldn't work there.

Advice to Senior Management

Check on the managers. They treat other people like nothing.

Pros

It usually has a very friendly environment to work in. There are many areas in which to be promoted. If you work hard and want to move up then you will.

Cons

The management does not always seem competent or care about the employees. This is based on one store though and the managers do have a tendency to move around from year to year.

Advice to Senior Management

Have better focus on some employee management. While the store focuses on customer service it is the employees that need to be treated right otherwise even the best laid plan for customer service is going to fail due to disgruntled employees.

Pros

It was a good job and I learned a lot. You get a lot of experience and responsibility very early in the company.

Cons

It is very hierarchical. I made some big changes to the organization that saved them millions of dollars and was not given a promotion or a bonus at all. In addition my numbers were ten times better than the more "seasoned" analysts and still no bonus or promotion.

Advice to Senior Management

Make it less hierarchical. Judge the people based off the performance that they do, not the amount of time they have at the organization.

Pros

They will hire anyone. They don't discriminate against race, gender, weight.. Usually schedules are done two weeks prior to calendar.

Cons

It's hard to move up in this company. Pay raises are laughable. They start you out at minimum wage, praise you like crazy when you are a hard worker and then do not compensate you.

Advice to Senior Management

Compensate hard workers. If you don't eventually someone else will. You have to take care of good employees. It's a must.