Teleflora Reviews

Pros

This is my second time working for Teleflora, and I must say that both times I've been lucky enough to see some of the perks of being a seasonal employee, such as prizes for meeting goals in your department, rewards for exceeding what is expected of you (like the $1/hr bonus I got for meeting attendance expectations, or the gift cards I got for handling an excessive amount of orders during the holiday rush), and contests with prizes on occasion.

The "everyday" perks of the job include a smoke-free environment, free drinks (coffee and soda), a flexible schedule, casual dress code, regular pay, and competitive pay rates. Many of the employees (whether seasonal, year-round, or management) are very friendly and are willing to help you with anything you are having trouble with.

If you are lucky enough to get hired on as an actual employee, there are even BETTER benefits, such as Dental/Vision/Health insurance, the Employee Assistance Program, and on-site gym (with an in-house fitness trainer).

Cons

Teleflora is a call center, so that means most of the "cons" of this job are actually pretty standard for the industry. Most of the jobs are either sales or service, both of which are highly stressful. If you're in service, you are dealing with angry customers (because they rarely call in to compliment us, of course) or frustrated/stressed florists. If you're in sales, you're stressed out about meeting sales goals because your levels determine if you're able to stay employed or not.

During holidays/high call volume days, breaks (already shorter than other companies) may be cut off altogether, although management normally tries to make up for it by bringing food in... In my experience with this attempt, though... I would have been better off with a sandwich than the food they provided. Days off and vacation days may also be unavailable during these times.

Teleflora has an extremely strict attendance policy, as well as a policy on the use of cellular phones on the premises. As breaks are so short as to cause most employees to take their breaks at their desks, cell phones are pretty much banned from the property because they are not allowed in most areas of the building - even on breaks.

Training is a little bit haphazard - most of what I was taught in training classes I had already learned on the floor by the time I was put in a training class for it.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire new employees a month or more in advance, and use the time to train them properly without the stress and confusion of a holiday rush. Require them to learn EVERY department before being put out on the floor, so that an agent who is in one department but receives a call from another department (which happens all the time) can handle it immediately without having to appear as clueless as they really are.

Although I understand that several qualified people can train, not every one is an adequate trainer. Please make sure the trainers go through training on how to be a trainer - because a poor trainer will mean a new employee is at a disadvantage before they have even started. I would love to see new employees have a "testing" period for at least a week before they are "let loose". This would be a lot easier if they were not starting just before a holiday rush.

Pros

Great benefits: dental and vision included as well as the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) which is a wonderful program. Beautiful building with breathtaking artwork, almost like working at in a gallery. Great people ... for the most part. When I worked there, we created a solidarity amongst the ranks to cope with the craziness of the environment.

Cons

Exceedingly high pressure, unpredictable environment. VERY high turn-over in management. Lack of respect of a person's right to a life outside of the office.

Advice to Senior Management

Try putting yourself in the shoes of your employees AND your member florists. Try working for a few days in a flower shop to see the realities of their lives and just how demanding and difficult it is.

Pros

good work/life balance
good company benefits

Cons

improved management hiring processes needed - so much turnover that's it's almost impossible to have a productive work environment
promotions are inconsistent and not always fair
little team camaraderie - too many different personalities and types that don't blend well

Advice to Senior Management

need to provide more opportunities for growth

Pros

Beautiful building and artwork; good location

Cons

Management is stymied by ownership, which treats the company like a personal playground.

Pros

-Pretty good health benefits. Health/Dental/Vision are all covered and anything you pay out-of-pocket is relatively low, at least in my experience so far. I haven't had to undergo any serious surgery or anything so I can't speak to that sort of thing.

-Non-management coworkers are friendly and laid-back (for the most part; see point #3 in the Cons section below).

-Windows everywhere and low cubicle walls so it doesn't feel claustrophobic.

-On-site gym facilities that are pretty decent, along with an in-house fitness trainer.

Cons

-Raises are few and far between, and are nearly worthless even when you get one. Last year, there was an actual policy that NOBODY would be getting a raise "because of the economy," yet in that time they've paid for two terrible Superbowl commercials and always talk about how we've "survived the recession with flying colors" and how we're getting new customers in new countries all the time. They also like to give lots of new duties to people (usually taken from incompetent people elsewhere) without any extra compensation.

-Insane amounts of micro-management. Apparently every instant of our day needs to be tracked and monitored, and any moment where it appears you're not working (even if you really are) is frowned upon. Just as one example, they purchased a 42" HDTV that sits on the wall and shows in bright colors what any particular person is doing at any given time (right down to who's on the phone currently), so that the managers can easily assess from a distance who needs to be told to do something.

-Probably doesn't merit its own entry since all workplaces experience this, but there are truly some catty people working here. I've seen coworkers get reported for incidents that never even happened, based on what Ms. Easily Offended *thought* she heard or saw.

-This has been mentioned elsewhere, but: order callout. On certain major holidays (Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, etc) we get a HUGE increase in online flower orders, so lots of temp workers are hired to help call orders to florists. There's still too much for the temps to handle alone so they end up calling "all-hands-on-deck" and every department has to stop what they're doing to call out orders as well. The system they have in place for doing this is pretty confusing/frustrating for everyone involved because most florists don't want the extra orders when they're already at max capacity and have already told our reps repeatedly that they don't want to be contacted anymore. Several people are assigned to walk around our work areas and watch to make sure that we're doing the callouts (which goes back to the micro-management point earlier).

-They have literally zero respect for your personal time, and I know this for several reasons:

1) During big holidays, you cannot take time off because of "vacation blackout" and are sometimes actually forced to come in on the weekend when you would normally be off. There is no way of opting out of this, they don't ask for volunteers, you just do it or they fire you.

2) Every tech support department is forced to have somebody on-call after-hours, one week at a time each. You have to be available until 9pm on weekdays and basically all day on Saturday/Sunday. This was implemented suddenly one day, despite not being in anybody's job requirements, and yet it cannot be opted out of either.

3) Double-standards in regards to punctuality. They're extremely strict about clocking in no more than 5min late or they will label it an "incident" (3 of which add together to make a "violation"; 3 violations end in job termination), and yet they also expect us to stay late to finish calls all the time. These calls can literally take several hours to complete but it makes no difference to Management; your personal life is of no concern to them. If they care so much about these few extra minutes in the morning, then we should definitely be allowed to go home exactly on time.

4) Several times, on busier days, Management has told us not to take any lunch breaks or to at least cut them short. I don't think my state has a law preventing this, unfortunately.

-They watch what you say on your personal Twitter/Facebook accounts for anything that paints Teleflora in a negative light. I know lots of companies do this, but it's really ridiculous that people can't say things in their personal lives outside of work without backlash from the company. Teleflora makes no secret of this either; they freely tell us that we're being watched (and seem proud of it) and that we'd better say only good things about Teleflora, if anything at all.

-Supervisors over certain departments are extremely defensive about any criticism made about their underlings and they do literally nothing when there is a problem that needs to be corrected.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat your employees with more respect than you're giving them now. There are some good people here and they're the ones who keep you in business; they deserve better. We are not slaves and should not be treated as such. Also, stop making stupid business decisions and stop sucking up to the Resnicks.

Pros

Steady paycheck and benefits. It's kind of sad, because this wouldn't be a bad place to work if it wasn't for the leadership currently in place.

Cons

Micromanaged to the point that we are no longer able to perform the most basic of our job functions without permission. Leadership is marginally competent at best, and most of the employees who actually understand how to do their jobs have either left or are in the process of leaving due to this. Morale is incredibly low and no one in upper management really seems interested in resolving this problem. Progress is slowed if not completely halted because of the red tape involved in completing routine tasks.

Advice to Senior Management

Allow your employees some autonomy within their job. Teleflora OKC has a lot of potential if there was management in place that would allow the company and their employees to grow.

Pros

The cross-section of people working for Teleflora is wonderful - there are many people with varied backgrounds (both personally and professionally). Colleagues are nice and the environment is generally pretty relaxed, in terms of inter-personal relationships on a collegial level.

Cons

Communication is seriously limited because Teleflora is a private company. Additionally, turnover is historically quite high and makes it difficult to really 'get going' on anything or maintain long-term goals and objectives which are sorely needed.

Advice to Senior Management

Become better about cross-departmental goal-setting, as that will help protect the overall accomplishment of goals, despite heavy turnover. It's really important that some stability be created.

Pros

Discount on floral orders
Gym on site
Good dental and medical insurance
Tuition reimbursement
If you are in management, you have a lot of freedom

Cons

Constantly changing priorities
Constantly changing upper management team
Technical departments are not very female friendly - only men in managemeny positions

Advice to Senior Management

Debbie Listmann is not a good leader - she says inappropriate things and gossips about her employees. This does not creat and environment if trust.

Pros

good benefits and reasonable pay

Cons

No stability and only favorites are promoted regardless of how well they work.

Advice to Senior Management

Be fairer in your promotions

Pros

Good benefits. Overall good work-personal life balance. Time off is not an issue.

Cons

No matter what your job tittle is, during holidays you will be on the phones calling out customer orders to member florists. Unless you have friends in high places or work in LA. LA staff does not do call out.

Advice to Senior Management

Give people real raises. Promote those who deserve it.