Marks & Spencer Benefits FAQ

Pros

All of the staff were really friendly. They welcomed me in and taught me everything I needed to know. The pay was good The staff areas were really clean and they provided free fruit, bread, tea, coffee etc which was a nice touch. It was overall a really positive place to work and I enjoyed my time there!

Cons

As a student, completing exams, I made it clear that I wouldn't be able to work loads of hours. They said they understood this, however every week I was having to talk to my manager about my hours, as they would schedule me in for almost 3 x my contracted hours. It was always a fight to get time off, even for events such as exams.

Advice to Management

Please consider the fact that some of your "fixed term" workers are fixed term for a reason. As students it's really hard to balance work and studies so to be putting us in for full time hours when we need the time for revision/exams is particularly unfair. Aside from this, I really enjoyed my experience there and the management were always pleasant and helpful.

Pros

- Nice colleagues - Decent pay - Good break room with free food and hot drinks

Cons

- poor management (managers are rarely on the floor) - too long probation period - too many floors to cover and expected to work in food sections with no training - no proper training just a couple of training videos which provide no practical value - customers can be uptight and uncooperative, want refunds way out of refund periods and demand senior managers to come onto the floor to explain basic store policies that staff at the till have already explained. - managers are pushy, lot of favouritism happening and unfair treatment

Advice to Management

Properly train your staff. Respond to calls asking for managers on the floor or else we can't get through a line of customers. Don't push people to take on more hours than they can manage (happened to many collegues) and give staff that want more hours, more hours! Make sure schedules are done properly so that staff don't need to cover multiple floors at once. Have more than one person on a floor. Managers need to train new staff themselves, don't just let other employees train new staff, that isn't in our job description and we have other tasks to do.

Pros

Free tea and coffe, good team members

Cons

Bad management and no valued

Pros

Staff discount, free drinks and snacks in staff room, friendly colleagues, reasonable pay rates for young people

Cons

Very hierarchical; too many managers and colleagues who acted like managers, even though they weren't; poor training (equality and diversity training was particularly bad and personal discriminatory views were expressed by managers); lots of heavy lifting; health and safety rules broken continually; very short unpaid breaks.

Advice to Management

Ensure that training managers keep their personal views to themselves when inducting new staff

Pros

Free fruit at lunch time.

Cons

They treated temporary staff really bad. Basically cheap labour.