This have anything to do with keeping the purposes John Lewis rental homes profits seperate from staff
The trend of squeezing the workers continue. It is probably 100% staff owned because it was good for PR.
The thing is, in this country regular folk can’t run their own business, they need to bow and make way for billionaires.
And if they don’t? Billionaires, who also run corrupt government, will run them to the ground.
That’s how it works today.
the staff ownership thing feel false, its not being run for the good of the people. Those stories about them become landlords, that is never done for “the good of the people”.
As for John Lewis stores, big department store, its an idea from another time. Boomers only have so long left, and when they are gone there will be so few who really want that store format.
Waitrose is “fine”, im not trying to hate on the rich in this post, there should be a range of stores, for different demographics. The basic supermarket format is alot more relevant than the department store format.
Well that’ll be John Lewis gone within 5-10 years if not sooner.
100% owned by employees but the sale of shares goes to the business 🤔
The corporate level employees want to keep the money to themselves.
Sharon white employed a retail lead with the strategy to half the shop floor staff and give the rest an ipad – that’s a great winning strategy. Sharon herself would make a great CFO no way is she capable of running JLP. Now she’s just delivered the message to staff that you work hard for us, you won’t get rewarded ! JLP should unionise !
Joined Waitrose in 2007 and the company has changed for the worst since being here, it’s a slow and inefficient company that is getting beaten to the punch thanks to incompetent management, competition from other supermarkets and “Partnership Model” that sounds great but never really cared for the frontline staff.
My sister used to work for Waitrose and they are not really any different from other supermarkets in how they treat staff. She went from working solely on the checkouts to being multi-skilled as staff numbers were cut and those who remained were expected to do more to make up for that. Managers were useless and my sister was expected to pick up their slack for no extra pay or any thanks. John Lewis might be staff-owned but it is not run for the benefit of shop floor staff, except for PR purposes.
Is it ownership if it can be taken way at a drop of a hat?
I worked for the partnership in 2012 or 2013 and was bewildered by some of the decisions being made. At the time the JL store was being built in Birmingham at huge expense at a time when store sales were flat. I think that store has now closed. At the same time the website was booming but the search capability was awful. The day to day IT was terrible, especially for data analytics… And the expense spent on the Christmas advert with Prime time slot on Britain’s Got Talent.
I left after 6 months as you could tell the culture was changing. You had a mix of people who wanted to do the right thing. But you had a new intake of Currys people who only cared about margin and profit.
I do wonder how much of today’s problems started under Andy Street that the current execs are blamed for today.
I feel for the partners that are there. They were some of the hardest working and nicest people I’ve ever met and they weren’t paid a lot back then.
And if it did I will have lost my last incentive to ever shop there.
As others have said – the solutions of those on the upper end of society are always to make those on the lower rungs make do with less. That’s got to change.
Or they could improve their retail offer, which is a bit shit tbh. Like some weird fucking hybrid of Paperchase, Curry’s, Debenhams and DFS.
As someone who worked for JLP between 2011-2017, I’m not surprised.
When I was there, the company used to hemorrhage money on a consistent basis all in the name of customer service.
Before JLP amended their Returns policy, it was an absolute free for all. Customers were able to return anything they wanted for whatever reasons as long as what they were returning was in a resellable condition. For example, a customer could buy a 55″ TV for £1500 & if once it was delivered to their home they didn’t like the size, shape, picture quality, then the customer could come back to the shop & get a full refund, no problems. Once that TV comes back, it would get tested & then we’d take off 10-20% in order to resell it.
This happened with every electronic item we sold. Don’t like your laptop, full refund. Kids didn’t like their bluetooth speaker, full refund. Granny couldn’t use her iPad properly, full refund.
I need not say more but you get the picture.
With that said though, JLP’s financial downfall is partly served by their dumb expansion plans.
I was lucky enough to help JLP open up new stores in Birmingham & Leeds as well as a Waitrose/JL-at-home in Basingstoke…
The fact that the board of JLP, who includes one of the Lewis family, thought it was a good idea to keep opening expensive Bricks & Mortar stores is absolutely mind boggling.
For example, when the Leeds store opened, the shop was fully stocked with merchandise that totalled about £13-15 million. Adding on the cost of building the actual store itself, you’re probably looking at a total cost of £40-50 million…
I helped open up 3 new shops between 2015-2016, so if you say Birmingham & Leeds were both £40m & Basingstoke being slightly smaller was £25m, then you’re essentially looking at a 100m investment in a single year. The question is, how long would each store need to operate before it turned a profit?
Aside from that, JLP & Waitrose suffer from a staffing bloat & low productivity. The company used to have waaaaay more managers than was necessary & had alot of staff working in low productivity roles.
John Lewis has been slipping for well over a decade. There used to be a reputation for excellent service and after sales service, that’s gone now at least in the central London stores.
We purchased approximately £15,000 of white goods from them in 2015 and for the most part the service was great and a warranty we had to use for a fridge freezer was excellent and honoured fully.
But we had to spend two hours in-store convincing them that our contract was with John Lewis and not with the manufacturer.
We didn’t have as much success on the kitchen and bathroom fittings front in 2017, we wanted to fit two kitchens and four bathrooms in a house we had gutted. They honestly couldn’t have cared less and after three visits we gave up and used local tradesmen which in the end turned out to be a great experience.
The same for curtains and shutters, John Lewis sub-contract everything out, that’s fine if the service and after-care is there but it wasn’t. Again we now use local companies on recommendation and it seems to be a lot easier.
Televisions and av equipment, it’s generally not in stock at John Lewis and delivery to store or home is 2-3 days at least. Or, I can ring around some Richer Sounds stores and see who has it in stock and pick up on the same day, great customer service and warranties on top.
This has now gone on so long I don’t even bother to look at John Lewis for major purchases.
It’s worthwhile mentioning that I don’t think the staff themselves have changed, they are usually great. But something has definitely changed on the stock side and I get the impression that the staff aren’t treated anywhere near as well as they used to be by management.
15 comments
This have anything to do with keeping the purposes John Lewis rental homes profits seperate from staff
The trend of squeezing the workers continue. It is probably 100% staff owned because it was good for PR.
The thing is, in this country regular folk can’t run their own business, they need to bow and make way for billionaires.
And if they don’t? Billionaires, who also run corrupt government, will run them to the ground.
That’s how it works today.
the staff ownership thing feel false, its not being run for the good of the people. Those stories about them become landlords, that is never done for “the good of the people”.
As for John Lewis stores, big department store, its an idea from another time. Boomers only have so long left, and when they are gone there will be so few who really want that store format.
Waitrose is “fine”, im not trying to hate on the rich in this post, there should be a range of stores, for different demographics. The basic supermarket format is alot more relevant than the department store format.
Well that’ll be John Lewis gone within 5-10 years if not sooner.
100% owned by employees but the sale of shares goes to the business 🤔
The corporate level employees want to keep the money to themselves.
Sharon white employed a retail lead with the strategy to half the shop floor staff and give the rest an ipad – that’s a great winning strategy. Sharon herself would make a great CFO no way is she capable of running JLP. Now she’s just delivered the message to staff that you work hard for us, you won’t get rewarded ! JLP should unionise !
Joined Waitrose in 2007 and the company has changed for the worst since being here, it’s a slow and inefficient company that is getting beaten to the punch thanks to incompetent management, competition from other supermarkets and “Partnership Model” that sounds great but never really cared for the frontline staff.
My sister used to work for Waitrose and they are not really any different from other supermarkets in how they treat staff. She went from working solely on the checkouts to being multi-skilled as staff numbers were cut and those who remained were expected to do more to make up for that. Managers were useless and my sister was expected to pick up their slack for no extra pay or any thanks. John Lewis might be staff-owned but it is not run for the benefit of shop floor staff, except for PR purposes.
Is it ownership if it can be taken way at a drop of a hat?
I worked for the partnership in 2012 or 2013 and was bewildered by some of the decisions being made. At the time the JL store was being built in Birmingham at huge expense at a time when store sales were flat. I think that store has now closed. At the same time the website was booming but the search capability was awful. The day to day IT was terrible, especially for data analytics… And the expense spent on the Christmas advert with Prime time slot on Britain’s Got Talent.
I left after 6 months as you could tell the culture was changing. You had a mix of people who wanted to do the right thing. But you had a new intake of Currys people who only cared about margin and profit.
I do wonder how much of today’s problems started under Andy Street that the current execs are blamed for today.
I feel for the partners that are there. They were some of the hardest working and nicest people I’ve ever met and they weren’t paid a lot back then.
And if it did I will have lost my last incentive to ever shop there.
As others have said – the solutions of those on the upper end of society are always to make those on the lower rungs make do with less. That’s got to change.
Or they could improve their retail offer, which is a bit shit tbh. Like some weird fucking hybrid of Paperchase, Curry’s, Debenhams and DFS.
As someone who worked for JLP between 2011-2017, I’m not surprised.
When I was there, the company used to hemorrhage money on a consistent basis all in the name of customer service.
Before JLP amended their Returns policy, it was an absolute free for all. Customers were able to return anything they wanted for whatever reasons as long as what they were returning was in a resellable condition. For example, a customer could buy a 55″ TV for £1500 & if once it was delivered to their home they didn’t like the size, shape, picture quality, then the customer could come back to the shop & get a full refund, no problems. Once that TV comes back, it would get tested & then we’d take off 10-20% in order to resell it.
This happened with every electronic item we sold. Don’t like your laptop, full refund. Kids didn’t like their bluetooth speaker, full refund. Granny couldn’t use her iPad properly, full refund.
I need not say more but you get the picture.
With that said though, JLP’s financial downfall is partly served by their dumb expansion plans.
I was lucky enough to help JLP open up new stores in Birmingham & Leeds as well as a Waitrose/JL-at-home in Basingstoke…
The fact that the board of JLP, who includes one of the Lewis family, thought it was a good idea to keep opening expensive Bricks & Mortar stores is absolutely mind boggling.
For example, when the Leeds store opened, the shop was fully stocked with merchandise that totalled about £13-15 million. Adding on the cost of building the actual store itself, you’re probably looking at a total cost of £40-50 million…
I helped open up 3 new shops between 2015-2016, so if you say Birmingham & Leeds were both £40m & Basingstoke being slightly smaller was £25m, then you’re essentially looking at a 100m investment in a single year. The question is, how long would each store need to operate before it turned a profit?
Aside from that, JLP & Waitrose suffer from a staffing bloat & low productivity. The company used to have waaaaay more managers than was necessary & had alot of staff working in low productivity roles.
John Lewis has been slipping for well over a decade. There used to be a reputation for excellent service and after sales service, that’s gone now at least in the central London stores.
We purchased approximately £15,000 of white goods from them in 2015 and for the most part the service was great and a warranty we had to use for a fridge freezer was excellent and honoured fully.
But we had to spend two hours in-store convincing them that our contract was with John Lewis and not with the manufacturer.
We didn’t have as much success on the kitchen and bathroom fittings front in 2017, we wanted to fit two kitchens and four bathrooms in a house we had gutted. They honestly couldn’t have cared less and after three visits we gave up and used local tradesmen which in the end turned out to be a great experience.
The same for curtains and shutters, John Lewis sub-contract everything out, that’s fine if the service and after-care is there but it wasn’t. Again we now use local companies on recommendation and it seems to be a lot easier.
Televisions and av equipment, it’s generally not in stock at John Lewis and delivery to store or home is 2-3 days at least. Or, I can ring around some Richer Sounds stores and see who has it in stock and pick up on the same day, great customer service and warranties on top.
This has now gone on so long I don’t even bother to look at John Lewis for major purchases.
It’s worthwhile mentioning that I don’t think the staff themselves have changed, they are usually great. But something has definitely changed on the stock side and I get the impression that the staff aren’t treated anywhere near as well as they used to be by management.