Pros
I would have rated Lidl 2.5 stars but I was informed by HR they fabricated several five star reviews on this site. The company provides challenging work and a fantastic opportunity for professional growth, while working alongside motivated and bright coworkers. The 401k plan offers 5% matching and immediate vesting. The premium healthcare plan is reasonably priced for this area, about $100 per month.
Cons
Employees need to work at least twelve-hour days if you want to be respected by your manager and working any less is extremely frowned upon. An employee was even skipped over for a promotion because management saw them leave at 6pm one day. They have a flextime policy, which would normally be a pro, but the only department which can utilize this policy is HR. Management is completely disconnected from their employees. They set unrealistic time frames for projects unnecessarily. They will be made aware of certain projects months in advance but do not communicate this to their employees until a few days before the due date, creating a chaotic environment where it’s a fire drill to finish. Many managers are completely under qualified and do nearly nothing, but they will snake by while taking credit of their employees’ work. Management will dangle the opportunity for promotion in front of you in order to get you to work harder, but hardly follows through on their promises. I was told that the company valued promoting from within when I started, but this is not the case in many departments. They bring their European mindset to this company and are not open to any change, however we do not get many of the perks offered in their Europeans operations. For example, we get half of the vacations days than in the European counterparts. We cannot work from home and are expected to take PTO when we are unable to get to the office in three feet of snow or if the metro shuts down. They try to sell to potential employees that we are metro accessible even though the office is over a mile away from the closest station. Management doesn’t understand that our office is not metro accessible because they all have company cars. We are expected to wear suits every day and even had our once a month casual Friday taken away because management did not think we were getting enough work done on those days. The company does not follow through with any of the values they preach. People will come for the money but leave due to do the hostile and chaotic environment. I would not recommend this company to any of my friends.