#understaffed

We need some help in the field we have been cut down to a skeleton crew and my manager is non-existent.

It's like everyone forgets once the layoffs are done. There's only so much the rest of us can absorb, and some things just can't be picked up at all. There's never any follow-up, no real attempt to readjust after the cuts, and zero attention to the important work that's simply not getting done anymore.

How we'll continue to function properly after this is beyond me. Nobody thinks about the future, they just care about what they can save right now.

What happens in a situation like this? When it's literally impossible to get everything done with the remaining number of people?

With poor middle management from the branch levels and issues not making it to the top people are fed up. Union talks in play. Drivers not able to take time off, routes sitting, customers not getting deliveries and no help. Warehouse runs way too short and people in place who aren’t fit for the job. Sales is getting fed up!

In the past month, I visited two leading microbiology labs in top U.S. hospitals. One lab had nearly 80 people performing the same task; the other had just five! Why don’t labs just start understaffing like we do! Need more yachts.

Does anyone else feel like the entire fiber and small cell business is in survival mode

Understaffed
Budgetary issues
Expected OT

This whole operation is running on one wheel it feels

Three team members left months ago with no replacement in sight. Their responsibilities have been distributed among the rest of us, and it seems leadership views this as a permanent solution. Is there anything we can do to force them to hire some people, because we're close to our breaking point?

We are so short-staffed right now it's unreal. I'm not sure who they're hiring these days, but the new folks in my store have zero experience and just stand around for most of the day. It's nothing like it used to be. It makes the job ten times harder for the rest of us.

We're already handling too much work, and now we're to lose more people next week? Are you kidding me? What's wrong with people running this place? Can we get them to do our jobs just for a week, just so they can see how bad things already are? We can't afford for it to get even worse.

My whole team has been running on empty all year. We’ve lost too many people, including two critical roles, yet the workload has actually increased. It has been impossible to meet the expectations of a manager who has never even tried to truly manage. No support, no adjustments, no effort to play to the strengths we still have as a team, no redistribution of work to help us through the worst tasks. Working here has never been easy, but this year has been brutal.

Belk is no longer terminating associates anymore for time and attendance issues (late clock in, call outs ect), we were told that because of staffing shortages that associates can only be terminated for egregious wrongdoing (theft ect..). If we terminated every Associate with time and attendance warnings we would literally have no associates left.

im loosing lots of associates. and they are not being replaced.
some days its just two associates on entire sales floor, especially in the mornings. it's worse now that after covid, way worse. i dont think i can take this much longer either.

I'm a FR in the West. We've seen our field and MR numbers go way down, and our home count go up. Nanos are starting to have these issues, scheds going on withthold, flags, PRS putting things on WH and not setting appointments, digital interims putting homes on withhold, and yet we still have the same performance expectation and policies.

There was a guy on the U.S. townhall that was retiring and called out management. I know they weren't happy inside and even though he was the only brave person to speak up, nothing will change. I've been looking for a new job for a year and it's been really difficult. 15 years ago we had AP. It was a pain in the butt, however at least the expectations and home count ratio were more acceptable.

If we go through another round of field layoffs, it's going to absolutely tank our performances. But so many of field guys refuse to unionize, so leadership can keep taking advantage of us and giving us more and more homes, with less field reps, and the same pay.

That’s what we’re looking at from now on.

Half our team is gone, and somehow we’re supposed to keep everything running like nothing changed. I genuinely don’t understand how leadership thinks the same workload is going to get done with half the people. There’s no plan, no adjustment, nothing. How's this supposed to work?

Lately it feels like we’re drowning in projects while only a handful of full-time employees are expected to carry all of it, and somehow the workload just keeps growing. We’re constantly being assigned new tasks without any additional support, yet leadership still questions missed deadlines and wonders what we’re doing with our time. It’s frustrating and exhausting, and I’m honestly wondering if anyone else is dealing with this same imbalance between expectations and actual resources.

We simply can't. My group is already stretched thin, and losing even one more person would wreck everything. We’re barely holding things together as it is. How can they even consider more layoffs?

Each day gets a little worse with BE in charge. There is no communication no big vision. It feels like the last days of a company going out of business where even the shelves are being put up for sale. People are visibly miserable. Like openly talking about how much they hate it here miserable. No one cares anymore. Most are stuck because the job market is cr-ppy. If it turns around this place will lose thousands overnight.

My team has been shrinking for two years straight, and none of the key roles were ever backfilled. At this point, I can’t even remember the last time I left at the official end of the day. The only thing keeping us going is that my teammates are solid. We’ve been carrying the load together, since our manager isn’t exactly helping.

We’ve pushed ourselves because the job market is rough and we’re all trying to hold on to what we have. But we’re getting to a point where the workload just isn’t realistic anymore, and the exhaustion is hitting hard. It makes you wonder what the point is. Fighting so hard for a paycheck every day, when the whole thing could be sent offshore at any moment.

There is a mass exodus of all job categories both in stores and at corporate in the state of North Carolina, dozens and dozens of jobs vacant in all areas (from high level corporate to entry level sales associate) all areas in almost all stores in the state of North Carolina.

Most of these layoffs made zero sense. Some teams were cut down to the point where they can barely function, and what’s worse is that a lot of the experienced, genuinely skilled people were the ones let go. Now whole groups are missing critical roles, people who actually knew how to tie things together and solve problems because they’d built that capacity over time. It’s not just about losing headcount, it’s the quality we lost that hurts the most.

Ever since the last round of cuts, my plate has doubled with no support in sight. I barely get a moment to breathe before something else lands on my desk. Breaks are more of a hope than a reality these days. I am counting down the time until I can move on to something healthier.

Most teams here feel stretched thin, and it shows in how tired everyone looks. Changes keep rolling out without enough people to support them, so the workload lands on whoever is closest. No one wants to take responsibility, so talks drag on forever while we wait for someone higher up to decide. It leaves the rest of us struggling to keep things moving.

It’s happened so many times already that I’m not even sure there are enough people left on some teams to carry the load. Every time they cut, the rest of us get buried.

1. Stores are drastically understaffed
2. Corporate human resources is disconnected from store associates
3. Favoritism is commonplace among associates and managers
4. Customer service is not a strong priority
5. sales numbers (good or bad) are not open discussed
6. High turnover among c suite leadership
7. belk is fending off many lawsuits from both employees and customers
8. Budgets and payroll dramatically cut
9. The company has a reputation for WOKE politics starting at c suite level
10. CEO remains an enigma to associates and managers

Until I read Mike's email

As someone who was bought into his new leadership until reading that it was very disappointing to see the disconnection from reality

Am already working 11-12 hour days 5 days a week without enough time to do everything as we are chronically understaffed and 90% of my time is spent dealing with issues that are a direct result of poor systems in place that have only ever been band aid fixed at best.

There is dead weight at fiserv who should be axed. But majority of people are hard working and doing the best they can with the systems available to them and until reading that email were quite energised at the thought of help being on the way.

Instead they were just told to do more work with no other changes apart from empty catch phrases.

So disappointing and upsetting to read.

Could you imagine what would happen if someone took Mike up on his offer to call him with feedback?
“Umm, we haven’t been responding immediately to customers rfis etc. bc we’re severely understaffed and have been working 60 hours a week for 6 months to just get releases out the door, so you’re really just asking us to work 70 and 80 hours a week.”
Recalibrating is not “hey let’s Really focus, people “ lol
And all the svp and vp henchmen would love to know who calls to know who to layoff.

Jobs sit empty, people quit without warning, and benefits keep shrinking while profits grow. Don't even get me started on the raises. This is not an employee friendly place and it never was.

And you can tell. Not exactly the best setup heading into the holiday season. Some Belk stores look amazing, and I know that only happens because people behind the scenes are ki-ling themselves to keep things together. But there’s only so much you can pull off when you’re short-staffed and the manager seems more checked out than actually concerned about performance.

Belk is the cr-ppiest company to work for. They want so much done. Like markdowns, markups, 5000 times the freight, customer service, credit, apps, sale sets, fullfillement, etc... all under minimum hours. Stores look like cr-p, can't recover, always on the register or having to do other things because God forbid they don't meet the numbers for them. Not to mention the dock, corporate watches the camera to see if your dock is cleared (he-l no it isn't, we have no hours and no time), they don't support there associates!!
But corporate has time to throw lavish parties in Charlotte and open new stores 🙄 that they won't staff correctly with a abundance amount of work to do. How about stop having stores hire if you won't give the stores hours to give them, common sence there. Do not work for Belk. They take all there associates and salary managers for granted. Less pay, less help, but more workload!!!!

A simple order is seriously taking 30min and they still mess it up. I don't recognize any of the usual representatives lately either, which is unfortunate because they actually did their job right and did it well.

Its interesting to see how differently things operate throughout the company. I see multiple people say that there is bloat. People say we need to cut the fat and get rid of people who don't do anything. Meanwhile my team has been short staffed and overworked for years.

They’ve been he-l-bent on cutting people and gutting the teams that actually know what they’re doing and get things done.

With so many layoffs without reason or replacements- none of these roles are actually “useless” they’re needed - the existing employees keep picking up the slack. It feels like the boiling a frog story, we just have gotten too used to doing more and more work for less and less pay. The workers have no say at all while they know the actual work being done and making the CEO money. Making the company more money to keep adding unnecessary C-suite executives with millions of dollars in pay. Why don’t we unionize? We have gotten too used to the lay offs of important workers without a real reason every Christmas. Multiple layoffs this year, we have gotten too used to this. The only “restructuring” needed is cutting the unnecessary executives and their made up roles. CEO has the personality that he’s an actor playing a CEO. These are people’s livelihoods he is playing with while getting richer than ever before.

Are there any Canadians left to support customers in Canada? Who are we supposed to contact? Everyone we used to deal with has left the company.

Checking in to see if all areas are like mine. Stuck now without the long term, valuable associates that knew their job, who were an asset to the company and now the rest of us are struggling to keep up with tasks that aren’t even in our job description and working with associates who are barely able to do the bare minimum of their job description. We were already overworked before VSP and now the ones that are still here are underpaid with more work than ever in hopes of maybe a 3% raise next year which isn’t even close to inflation rate. Feeling defeated at this point working for a company who has proven they don’t care about their employees.

Our teams work so hard even being short staffed. Last week we had a great visit from our regional! Then this week our market manager came in and ripped us! The club looks the same as last week! So if a sign is a little crooked, or a pallet not on the line, we fail. Is it like that everywhere?

Is this another way of quietly reducing the number of employees? We’ve had several positions sitting open for months, one since April, and nothing’s happening. All of us are taking on extra work we shouldn’t have to do just to cover for it, and at this point, I’ve got a feeling it’s going to stay that way.

I really wish they’d just tell us what’s going to happen and when. We’re working ourselves into a frenzy here. Jobs are scarce, bills are high, and being laid off in times like this is pure panic fuel. It would be nice if they at least handled this professionally and with a bit of basic consideration.