Don't Do It. - Manager David's Bridal Employee Review

• So much is expected of you but very very little given in return. • Frugality is wise as a business, but you should know that this company favours no frills, bare minimum, legal requirement compliance in it's duty of care towards employees. • This is a company who promote incentives in USD and then tell you that it will be converted to GBP when the winner is announced instead of matching the USD amount, all so they can save money. •Inclusivity is a massive buzz word, however, cultural differences between the US and UK are railroaded and conversation on this subject is deeply frowned upon and career limiting. •This organisations senior leaders do not understand what it means to work cross culturally, and worse still, has no desire to understand what it means. •You must stick to the US tried and tested methods at all costs - even at the expense of profit, customer experience and basic employee engagement. •You work hard, but the organisation is grossly inefficient and doesn’t understand how to work smart, so your efforts can be undone •The company loves to talk about diversity and inclusion, but it's all smoke and mirrors. •Conversation about diversity is not welcomed, invited and do not occur. •Considering this companies size, diversity, where it matters, is glaringly lacking across the company as a whole. 1. Life As An Employee On paper, what David's Bridal is comprised of should equal a great experience for customers and employees. Two people chose to get married and the bride needs your help to complete the special day. The brand has beautiful product (albeit with persistent quality control issues originating at the US distribution centre), 3 incredible fresh new store locations in the U.K., an abundance of experience as a bridal wear retailer with a 60+ year history, whilst operating 300+ stores across the US and Canada. Unfortunately, the opposite is true, it's a nightmare working at this organisation, and here’s why. Somewhere along the line, someone introduced a culture of fear and blame into this organisation. That fear remains today and permeates the decision quality of every critical function. This ultimately fuels the never ending toxic corporate environment, and ends up negatively impacting you as an employee and the experience of the customer. If you're a leader who has initiative, ideas or who can see beyond glaringly obvious flaws to solve a problem, this company is definitely not for you. They are only interested in you unquestioningly complying with their entrenched and explicitly prescribed way of doing things. 2. Common Sense & Initiative Not Encouraged This organisations need to control you and micro manage every minutia of detail runs to the core of every conversation, task or direction. This is not an organisation that will respect or reward you for using your initiative, business acumen or common sense. Instead you will be named and shamed, with US head office individuals routinely CCing the world and their dog in their email response to drum up an audience to witness your public humiliation. People love to call out your mistakes or something that hasn’t worked, instead of using their energy to come up with a solution. It’s the cultural norm not to give direct open feedback in this organisation - it goes directly to your line manager and is painted in the worst possible light. Thankfully, you’re insulated from this if you have a good line manager relationship. The corporate fear and blame culture means everybody is out for themselves and to cover their own back at all costs. You learn fast that the ultra hyped spirit of team work and collaboration is actually, fake. Given the opportunity, someone you collaborate with and talk with daily on the phone at US head office, will throw you under the bus if there is a remote chance they might come off as non compliant with the direction given by someone more senior. 3. Poor Interdepartmental Communication Internally this enormous company has become fractured over the years, so each US function operates in oblivious silos: Marketing is a silo, Finance, Store Operations, Buying & Merchandising and HR are all silo’s. The right hand doesn't know what the left is doing, leading to very costly mistakes, failed communication, multiple duplications of work and endless meetings and conference calls where you’re patronised and herded like sheep. One of the companies biggest shortcomings in supporting the UK is it’s failure to set up a UK task force to launch the brand. Instead, Store Operations, Finance, Accounts and Marketing functions in the US support all 300+ US and Canadian stores and the 4 new UK stores. The problem, is that is you’re automatically a poor relation and never a priority to people who simply don’t understand what it means to successfully operate a brand in the UK. 4.Examples of Failed Communication: •Phone lines in stores cut off for days by BT because bills haven’t been set up correctly by head office. •Employee and customer toilets closed for a week with the smell of raw sewage wafting through the store while your maintenance ticket gets trapped by red tape in US Store Operations. •Basic supplies to do your job disappearing because someone 10,000 miles away has no consistent process in place for the U.K. and forgot to press a button to reorder. • Senior leadership regularly instruct IT to make changes to the appointment booking system in the US without informing or being mindful of the massive consequence for UK store teams. This creates 100's more appointments per week than the store can manage, causing stress, exhaustion, turnover, absence conflict and disappointment for many many customers when they can't be seen for their appointment. •Marketing collateral that you must execute as per direction never materialises because someone from US head office forgot to send it internationally because you’re in the U.K and only 4 of 330 stores… 5.You’ve Never Experienced Payroll Like This I have never encountered such an (un)support(ive) US head office payroll function that treats employees with absolute contempt and prides its self in saying “No". Pray there are no errors made with your pay (they are frequent), because the US payroll teams default response (even when it is their mistake) is to make you wait a week until they've checked all the things you've already told them (while you have zero pay) or if it's a small amount (but still their mistake) you can wait until next pay day. And don't even think about a CHAPS payment for emergencies when your whole salary has not been paid and it's a US payroll mistake. Nope, you gotta wait for a BACS (3 working days) after you've provided them with all the evidence they need to act and they've confirmed what you've already told them, because it's cheaper for the company to rush you to do your job - but hurrying them to pay you is a no no. As the US payroll team are on a different time zone, factor that into the delay to receive your salary, because the UK based outsourced payroll are only allowed to receive instruction from the US. So, it's pretty pointless having a UK payroll provider because their authority has been stripped. This is to ensure the US payroll control is retained and their draconian payroll processes are complied with.