As a company, lululemon has accepted and encouraged organized retail crime, and continually doesn’t do anything about it. With no consequences, ORC has gotten to the point where there are threats of weapons, shooting, and harm to employees. Teams are verbally harassed regularly by ORC perpetrators, including enduring slurs regarding their own race or sexuality. When reported as teams are told to do, they are repeatedly encouraged to “file a report” to our asset protection team, which results in no action. It got to the point where my team had 80% turnover in less than 6 months, due to constantly living in fight or flight stress responses while at work. One store manager in the region responded to their teams feedback and concerns around this with “Well, if you can’t handle this type of environment, then maybe this role isn’t for you.” This is a retail sales floor role, teams shouldn’t be submitted to such blatant harassment and forced into a stressful and dangerous work environment. The company also touts high growth and development opportunities; however past the Assistant Manager role, there are very few opportunities for growth and very little support or transparency from managers regionally and above in regards creating or sharing development plans for talented individuals in store roles; those people have the drive, the want, and passion to grow, and it gets very frustrating, when you repeatedly get told “next time!”. When asked about feedback, they have none—but they continue to fill roles with temporary contract transfers, of people who have already done that exact role. Essentially if you want “Role A” you can only get it if you have done “Role A” before. This really limits growth opportunities for people who haven’t done “Role A” but are qualified to get hired into it, and do it well, while learning and developing as a leader. These folks are super out of touch with the atmosphere in stores, as well as the sheer amount of talent they are losing due to all of the above. Frequently, regional and area managers push to both hire and terminate to fulfill diversity quotas instead of hiring who will be the most powerful and impactful candidate in those roles based on the role requirements. Over the last year, I witnessed how severely this impacted the region and area that I work in, as multiple business units and dozens of teams weren’t being managed properly.
I had been with lululemon for almost 8 years, and I’m really disappointed in the direction that it took about 2-3 years ago. It is nothing that it says it is. I’m also disappointed that I didn’t leave sooner.
