SUPERVALU Reviews

Pros

- 401K Benefits
- Free Tea/Coffee
- Onsite Gym
- Continuous, unpredictable change is adventurous & fun
- Financially sound

Cons

- It's all about how you manage-up
- Blame game all over
- too many levels & hierarchy
- lots of responsibility & accountability at lower levels without empowerment or clear definition of roles

Advice to Senior Management

Employees should be part of the strategy for the company to turnaround

Pros

The benefits are decent. The people are great.

Cons

Lack of direction
Lack of focus
Lack of decision making
Low comparative compensation

Advice to Senior Management

Get informed, decide, Act.

Pros

Mostly good people with good intentions but every one thought there position and project was the most important task at hand.I started as an Albertsons employee, IT department of 80. Merged with American stores, IT department of 600. Merged with SVU and total of 1500 related IT employees all retained.

Cons

Most IT employees were very teritorial about there positions. Butting heads was all that was acomplished until mid level management stepped in. But they had to have upper levell mangements approval. It turned in to a beurocratic nightmare to accomplish anything.
Every quarter 100 to 200 jobs eliminated or sent to India. I saw IT go from a lean machine that could react to market changes to a bloated organization where no one could make decisions unless it was to buy software that never worked. First to market for new IT solutions meant buying something and spending years to modify and learn the pachage.
100 pages of paper work needed to make a simple change plus going through 5 approval phases that could each take weeks. Indian IT people were very good and worked for about a fourth of the price. But did not understand the business and needed very complex and detailed designs in order to produce a work order.

Advice to Senior Management

Cut the fat and management levels. Make processes simpler and not more complex. Bloated processes are a result of the CYA attitude every one has when all of there jobs are at stake. Figure out how to be a nimble machine. Do one IT System and any company that does not like it can find other support. Trying to be all things to all people never works.

Pros

Genuine people
America's Neighborhood Grocer
Career growth opportunities
Flexibility with work-life balance

Cons

Economy is tough for grocery currently

Advice to Senior Management

Keep the focus on the long term

Pros

Good people to work with on the individual teams, growth opportunities within my business line.

Cons

Completely unstable, feels like a sinking ship sometimes when coming to work.

Advice to Senior Management

Speak up! You have to tell us things if you wnt to see results, just stating that we're "on the right track" doesn't do anyone any good. And what's with all of the dropped projects? The Focused Four and Project SHE went away silently while the 8 Plays is rolled out just as silently.

Pros

Most employees are real nice.

Cons

Some employees seem a tad prejudice or indifferent until they get to know you.

Advice to Senior Management

Innovation is the key to advancement. It is going to take a while to turn this company around, but it can be done. Don't give up!

Pros

Union benefits. Inexpensive health insurance. Numerous available shifts.

Cons

all the associated received a pep talk last month and played games to receive gift cards to encourage us to talk to every customer and raise customer satisfaction in the stores. We were treated like morons by the district manager and other corporate employees. Then we were promised a bagger at every register to raise customer service satisfaction. Then this month all the baggers were cut and all part time employees were cut back to 29 hours. I am aware that this time of year hours get cut but cutting a 40 year old single mother with more seniority to the same hours as a 16 year old bagger with no financial requirements is unjust. The company wants all part timers cut to contract minimum of 20 hours, The attitude is as stated above "if you dont like it just quit". How can they expect us to be happy and nice when we can't pay our winter heating bills and are being forced to work harder with no incentive other than to not get fired or receive further hour reduction. You cant even get a part time job to make up for the reduction because the company is inflexible and will just cut you from the schedule. Supervalu had lied to its employees and customers.

Advice to Senior Management

Get someone with people skills to be honest and open with employees.
You want us to make money for the company stop treating us like slave driven cattle.
Talk to clerks, not the union or managers, about how to improve the company.
Have all the corporate big wigs work two weeks as clerks in stores to truly understand what we experience and what is necessary to make the store function.
Evaluate your store managers more thoroughly. My store manager is a back stabbing two faced liar. His associates have no respect for him and that hurts store moral.

Pros

SUPERVALU usually takes longer to make decisions, sometimes it's not that bad after all. It takes the company 3 months to finalize the layoff plan and usually it will give an employee 2 months after the layoff notification.

Cons

The company continues to miss the street estimates quarter after quarter with consecutive write-offs) and the sales just can't be turned around (even the heavily focused growth area of Save-A-Lot is showing flat ID store sales). The bonus plan has been revised twice in 1/2 year, but the company performance still won't meet the target.
It announced closure of stores and 10% reduction in corporate staff. It continues to lose employee and top management talents.

Advice to Senior Management

Sell the company before it get worse, which will do no good to both employees or the stake holders

Pros

Salary is competetive, 401k is very good,benefits are decent. Upper management is very understanding when it comes to requesting time off.

Cons

Company has instituted a new program which makes their goals unreachable. They have cut labor hours which has made it impossible to run the store effectively. Their attitude is that if you can't comply you can leave. Due to their quest for expansion this will be the second year in a row that there will be no bonuses or raises. It makes you feel like a liability not an asset.

Advice to Senior Management

Upper management needs to get down in the trenches to see what it is like to run a store under this new program and not just have the attitude that this is the way it is, I don't care, make it happen or leave.

Pros

Decent compensation and half decent medical benefits are 2 of the few reasons to work at
SUPERVALU. These are for the most part results of organized labor.

Cons

The downsides are far more greater--almost like delivering to a retailer and not seeing a mouse
somewhere in their backroom.

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to be more like managers and less like bosses. Incompetence and
"Balldroppers" both need to be identified and eliminated. Working with labor would also
be a step toward positive direction.