Sainsbury’s Employee Reviews about "team leaders"

Pros

I work for Sainsbury's for 5 years while being a student at university. They were very accommodating to university students letting me come back to work during the university vacations saving hassle applying for other jobs every vacation. After I graduated from university they offered me a permanent contract which meant I had a job straight out of university. Colleagues were overall very nice and friendly. I had a chance to be trained in the majority of different departments adding more variety to the job.

Cons

Low pay and the flexible contract with varied shifts made planning ahead inconvenient. It is very hard to get a full time contract. The sick day policy is very harsh. The Cafe was very badly organised with customers sometimes waiting waiting 45+ for their food and complaining, having to stay over one hour after my shift was due to end because of closing down and this was due to poor management from the team leader and managers.

Pros

Absolutely nothing, gone downhill in the past couple of years...

Cons

Long hours, expected to stay an extra 1-2 hours everyday and not get paid, no support, sometimes working 14 days straight, hard to take full break entitlement, physical abuse from people stealing and they don't care, poor communication between management team, no work/life balance, expected to work on holiday, penalised for taking sick days, convenience managers expected to do everything, upper management are almost all white men, no mental wellbeing support, made all team leaders redundant, stopped Sunday time-and-a-half pay, no longer provide hot food in canteens, have to work on x-mas and bank holidays.

Pros

They MIGHT pay you a bonus. Their system is so disorganised & a mess you will likely find you can get away with anything. It actually is a sociable friendly environment to work. You do get a good friendship group & it is flexible with a work-life balance. It treats everyone equally bad - so it is fair in that respect.

Cons

Management - Their ambitious, lazy & honestly utterly cruel at times, trust me I was one. It's an unhealthy environment. They do NOT give a damn about you. From regional managers to your department manager - they really do not care. You won't get your bonus - It's reliant on a mystery customer, who feedbacks whether or not product was available or if there were queues - but since sainsburys refuses to replace lost staff that is always the case As aforementioned, expect to be multi-skill trained (THIS IS NOT A BAD THING) right up until you find you have 8 rollers left to work, you've been called to tills or somewhere else & it's apparently your fault you didn't do the impossible. NO accountability for management errors or recognition when you did good. Literally no advancement opportunities since team leaders don't exist, the company typically externally hires unless you're a brown-noser.

Pros

Had a decent team most of the time. I transferred stores twice in the 4 years I worked for this company which was an easy to do process. Staff discount sometimes went up to 20% for special occasions. Some store managers were very supportive. Great team and company events. The company event was sadly scrapped by the incompetent CEO Mr Coupe.

Cons

There was an extreme lack of diversity in two of the stores that I worked in. The first store I worked in were all of middle eastern ethnicity with no other ethnic groups present in the workplace. It was also very male dominated. Being a female in a male dominated workplace, I was subject to a lot of sexism. I was denied doing jobs on the shop floor because as a weak female, I was apparently incapable of unloading cages to stack the shelves and was always confined to the tills. One team leader even took a male colleague off the tills and said "get off there, this is a ladies job" as he pointed at me. Of course, nothing was done about this. I had a racist store manager who only hired individuals that matched her ethnic background (Bangladeshi). She refused to hire anybody from any other background and often picked on me, probably because I am Caucasian. This manager also expressed disdain at celebrating Christmas in the UK. I was perved on by one of the team leaders and nothing was done about it. It resulted in me transferring stores once again. The confidential hotline was a joke. You would use it when you were having problems and felt like you could not talk to your store manager, but nothing would get done. I was selected to be the "great place to work" rep and was given zero guidance on my duties. Just attend the meetings is all I was told. I was then subject to ridicule for not being able to complete silly projects.

Pros

Worked with great people and enjoyed leading my team from the front.

Cons

Management rely too heavily on Team Leaders, most days you walking out of work late because you've been given a list as long as your arm along with your daily tasks.

Pros

I joined the company at a time when they were flourishing. This was reflected in the hourly rate being quite good for that time period, particularly as the work was not the most taxing mentally. The company is clearly open to staff who want to 'progress' through the company. At least at store level.

Cons

Where do I start? The level of competence from management at store level, was the worst I have experienced so far in my working life. For the first few years I worked there, they simple had too many managers, most of which offered nothing. Then we come to the 'bias' of said managers. All but one of the managers I had, exhibited a clear bias towards their 'friends' This often lead to said friends getting away with not performing to their expected workload, and that left excess work being forced on to others on the shift. Not only was this completely unfair, but it created shift performance problems at busy times of year, i.e Christmas. If you ever had any concerns with regards your job or a member of staff, forget expressing these concerns. The management all had each others backs, and I experienced multiple occasions of staff being treated unfairly due to them making legitimate complaints concerning managers/team leaders. In a number of cases, they ended up feeling pressured into leaving the company.