Pros
They pay way above minimum wage (from my own pay and others I've talked to in other states) it's usually atleast $2 more. 25% employee discount on top of any promotions going on. Support opportunities. (Dependent of where you're working at) the staff becomes your family H&M is SUPPOSED to care about your work-life balance. Thanksgivings off. Paid bday (part timers get 1/4th of the hours worked the week BEFORE your day, full timers get a full 8 hours guaranteed) Flexible with scheduling/availability-as long as you are available on fridays- sundays you're good. Honestly I used to love this company, but in the past year it's gone downhill and I plan on leaving soon.
Cons
District does not listen to the needs of the employees- our store has no AC (I've now heard this is an issue with quite a few h&m stores) and even though we have a standing fan in our fitting room that they have seen plenty of times when they visit they have yet to take care of the AC. Customers complain as well and nothing has been done. District also thinks they are a help when they come to support a store- they are not. They will slow down register efficiency if they decide to help out, as well as with truck processing. They only try to fix a problem months later. High turnover and declining sales at a certain store took MONTHS to get the district team to realize that they made a mistake in choosing the manager for that location. It wasn't until over half the staff had quit that they realized the problem was the manager sucked. If they see issues with the store they don't really bother to step aside and ask associates what's going on- they just believe what overhead usually says (which means they can easily put the blame on the associates). H&M has moved away from caring about their employees so much, at this point they more so care about making their customers happy and making money. They've cut out raises quite a bit, make work more difficult than it should be (adding new stuff to sale every 2 weeks compared to once every month or 2 like it was last year), too lenient of a return policy, plus customer service hotline has grown to be more lazy and immediately connects the customers to the sales associate that unfortunately answered the phone. Online training that is expected to be done at home now (unpaid). Not easy to move up within your own store. Raises suck. Only 1 a year unless you ask for one. Moving up to full time? They got rid of that raise too. I've been with ththe company over 4 years now and have only increased my pay by $1.90 since I started. If understaffed they will try to get part timers to work more than what they are supposed to (32 hours max every week), and then shame you for not doing it. Training new hires has now gone from 40 hours (across 2 weeks/8 shifts), down to 16 hours (4 shifts).