Waitrose reviews

3.8

67% would recommend to a friend

(8,744 total reviews)
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Jason Tarry

74% approve of CEO

48% positive business outlook

Waitrose has an employee rating of 3.8 out of 5 stars, based on 8,744 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Waitrose employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Retail & Wholesale industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

9K reviews
2.0
Oct 20, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Its warm and dry (unless you're working in the freezer, chillers, behind meat and fish/deli counters or out in 'the yard'. Food in the dining room/canteen is subsidised. Senior management are skilled but hampered by inept 'middle managers'.

Cons

Discount is not great considering the price of the food No union representation Poor rate of pay compared to other retail jobs (used to rely on the annual bonus to make it up - that bonus has been declining rapidly - this year chances are it will be between 0 and 3%) Pension fund is in a shambles Whole business being propped up by John Lewis sales They now expect you to do five jobs in the time given for one Section managers generally appear to have little training in leadership or management before being given an ipad, an air of authority and a total disregard for the welfare of their staff. They're implementing 'modern Waitrose' whereby you just keep getting pulled from doing a job on one section to do a job on another (whether you're trained or not) because the section managers can't plan. You then return to your original job (eventually) to find yourself getting a telling off for not having done it quickly enough (or at all). One branch rota. There isn't space for me to tell you all that's bad about that! Suffice to say, its not working. To save money they don't recruit until people leave (school age heading to Uni - happens every year at the same time and they know it does) so you end up short staffed, underpaid and overworked. Turnover is 80% plus in an industry where the average is 33% - and they wonder why?

2.0
Aug 21, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

25% off in John Lewis 13% Waitrose Depends what store but there was some good social events Most co-workers were great to work with but not managemnet

Cons

I've worked in two stores in London over the past year. The first store I worked for is fully Modern Waitrose, I was trained on every section but instead of training all members of staff, they only trained 2 of us in the whole store. So I was originally hired for Operations however I ended up on food service on most of my shifts as they were so understaffed. That store had great people, but everyone was stressed and there was never enough staff. Management was bad there was a period of a month were I had no manager, suppliers didn't get paid, stock was left out of date on shelves, I'd daily waste a trolley of food. One day £200 of steaks, because they hadn't got staff in to reduce them. Most of management you never saw on the shop floor helping out, they were either in the office looking busy or on their phones. I was originally temporary but was made permanent after 3 months but they cut my hours without prior warning. You're at the mercy of what's convenient for them. Also asking for hours to be changed is impossible. They now have put in a rule that you have to work a minimum of 20hrs a week and many students have had to leave because of this. The second store I moved too never had any staff and I never saw the manger on the shopfloor unless she really had to, she was on holiday a lot and always went home at a convenient time. I was there a short period of time but it was enough for me to workout that if you showed any enthusiasm you'd be relied on to do the stuff no one else wanted to do. The staff at this store were really lazy and would never help out. They tried to make me csa within 2 weeks of transferring, and they made me stay pass my hours because they had no other staff to cash up. I didn't get a thank you for it. I had to tell one of the mangers who was running checkouts one night (who'd worked in the company for 10 years) how to cash the tills up. I was shocked with all the experience she had she was asking me...just a supermarket assistant. If you ask a lot of the older members of staff things have changed and their satisfaction has gone down. The company doesn't have enough money, so all the things that made the partnership a great place to work have been cut, breakfast in the partner dining room is dying out.

1.0
Aug 3, 2017

Slaverose

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

My other employees make work just about bareable

Cons

Too many Managers, always looking for things you're doing wrong, even though they themselves don't know everything No enough consistancy or communication between managers, always muck ups, or mistakes Punished for being better in your job, ie learning different food sections means you're stretched to your limit. Minimum pay and still waiting for an overdue review. Understaffed, overworked, with no expected new staff to cover the load because of budgets.

Viewing 88 - 90 of 8,744 Reviews

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