Where do I even begin. Firstly don’t bother if you are external to the company heading into a management position. They provided me with no foundational training in the mere basics of the role. They threw me in with little to no support, I had to devise my own goals so I had structure and I submitted them to their retail support area (I did/didn’t have a boss just a big group of people who were in charge... make sense of that wacky scenario, anyway I digress) I got no response on my goals until midway through my probation when I was accused of underperforming (the store has never been more profitable since I arrived...) they raised my mental health in the discussion basically wanting me to quit as it would be to much, I refused and they then accused me of not being a culture fit for the company. They had this dumb idea of “frank and honest” discussion instead of proffesional and structured, and blamed the probationary meeting snafu on that, all I got was an apology but not an investigation into the matter or a mediation between me and the individual. This probation meeting was verging on unlawful and was a fine line towards discrimination for the mere fact that I suffer ADHD and Anxiety related disorders (apparently those things are limiting, which is a load of crap and I have been a successful manager at other companies and made a transition to one that is a dud) I then went on to find out they wanted to conduct a staff survey on my suitability for the role, the staff had been difficult from day one and considered me to be an enemy as I wasn’t from within Lush and they were toxic as hell, but hey I didn’t let that get to me at first until I realised they will make or break my ability to still be employed and they used that to their advantage. I was basically a servant in my own store to them and it was awful. As some backstory the team hated their previous manager and used the supervisors long standing with the company to treat her like dirt and undermined her then attempted to do the same to me, and hey it worked because retail support would not assist in any way in helping put an end to this. They simply kept saying “it’s a soft skill, we can’t help you”, I mean they could have cleaned up before I arrived and set boundaries and I don’t know, put effort into it. Given this I decided to leave. Some more back story, until 2017 the company didn’t have a established HR department, nor did they have a safety officer, the stores are unsafe and basically a death trap, I have heard of awful injuries from long standing staff and horrible breaches of the fair work act from retail support and management on a whole and witnessing this was just horrible, I tried my hardest to raise these issues with head office and it was not acted on, it’s only a matter of time until something serious happens and then they will be guilty of not listening. They have one safety officer over looking 45+ stores and manufacturing... like one person dealing with all that, and if we did have safety reps, I have no clue who they were. I had no safety training when I arrived nor did my team, I had to google safety modules for retail and train them myself. This company has the potential to be a utopia for all retail companies to look towards, but instead they are stuck in a period of transition and don’t seem to be rushing to make the company a better place for external managers to enter into, but hey... bathbombs... yay... I guess
