Research shows that employees who feel trusted by their managers are higher performers and exert extra effort. Do you trust Follett leadership after the past 4 years?
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Follett allowed the leadership to move from textbooks to product management. Textbooks was the business and there is very little knowledge left.
I couldn't figure out why Follett family is allowing these bad decision making. Sometimes i think they are intentionally driving the business to the ground. I feel that the younger Follett generation wants to get out of the business and just relax and enjoy the fruit of what their grandparents labor. This is just what comes and goes in my mind.
I'm responding to the 10th grade English level here.
I cannot take the grammatical errors anymore from salaried people who put forth any kind of correspondence, particularly from NQ's blog. Yesterday, he posted that he was an Assistant Editor in a previous life. For who? Chuck E. Cheese?
Let's look at two sentences he wrote last week:
"If you have kids in your life, you really know what this means."
This is incredibly insulting to those that don't, as if they can't care.
"If you have an idea on how to do something..."
Is this for real? "ON how to do something?" What language is this?
It's the family and the board.
Nope. Just the family. Think of the board as advisors. The family makes the decisions.
They have closed door meetings with only the family - no outsiders allowed.
Employees have to leave the room and sit outside like children.
I haven't trusted them since MLS went up and essentially told everyone at the HO that the #1 Follett value was shareholder value.
This happened - not a rumor. All in the room that understood the implications of that statement knew that was the beginning of the end of the company. Sadly we were right.
I haven't trusted them since MLS went up and essentially told everyone at the HO that the #1 Follett value was shareholder value.
I trust Follett leadership to continue issuing pompous directives that will further damage an already suffering textbook margin at stores and arrogantly blame stores for any resulting failures. (People in CM at the HO need a lesson in grammar and spell-check, as an aside. They write at 10th-grade level.)
Yes, I trust my manager, but nobody above that position. You are correct in stating employees work better and are more likely to stay if the environment is not toxic. This was proven this week. Upper management fishing for any way to discredit trustworthy valued employees even when the store substantially increased sales.
It's the family and the board.
Every action extends from that small group of people.
Whether they are disinterested, incompetent, or lazy, I'm not sure.
The damage they have done to so many families is a poor legacy for a company that has been part of this industry for 150 years. This IS what they'll be remembered for, the way they treated the dedicated team that gave them the extra time and attention whenever asked.
Don't forget Follett's role in changing the market and accelerating the change...call it a deadly self-fulfilling destiny. By implementing stupid 'macros' and 'formulas' for determining QTCs, Follett short-changed quantities of available textbooks to sell, caused out-of-stocks, and forced customers to go elsewhere to make purchases. When customers went to other sources, they discovered lower prices, and hassle-free service, and ultimately a new place to source their textbooks. While the death spiral practices were taking place with text processes, the quality of clothing was diminishing as Follett was attempting to increase margins. Unfortunately this was taking place at the same time that alumni and students were seeking better quality and style spirit wear. These are ways that Follett forced the market to change and reduce their market share.
Leaders who snag the credit for every single success while passing blame to employees for every single thing that goes wrong; poor work culture that leaves everyone unmotivated and very uninspired; a company perfectly content on keeping their employees stagnant, since they don't care about education or degrees, so people work a dead-end job with the same title for ten years; and a proven track record of false promises, combined with .08 raises (if even), means employees are going nowhere fast.
Poor leadership, especially in regards the strategy of the business in changing times. Layoffs gutted the institutional knowledge in both the stores and home office. Add to that non-existent training for new managers which leaves stores run by people who do not know the systems and absent middle management that doesn’t visit the store enough to notice or frequently does not know anything either.
The market changed and follett reacted poorly. It is that simple. follett shed experience long after the campus communities stopped supporting the campus bookstore. How many long tenured employees landed a job within the university they had worked for, for many, many years? Not many. The universities, the students and the alumnae stopped using the bookstore as the exclusive venue for their school. follett laid off and abused out long time employees and no one at the schools cared. That meant the market changed.
The market changed and the group of idiots running the company failed to see the trend. Then they reacted to the change poorly. Now follett is a ghost company that is a nasty place to work.
It is hard to trust when you feel like you are always in a no win situation. In a retail environment, it is always the fault of execution. Never the fault of poor strategy. Is it fair....no. What are you going to do about it? Exactly...a no win situation. Just keep in mind....As the micromanaging continues and results falter, so shall your career.
There are several reasons for the struggles..in no particular order:1. loss of industry specific knowledge/experience (aka the Junior Varsity is running the show now);2. increased competition with no new initiatives to fight back; 3. aging systems; 4. lack of drive (or understanding) to re-invent (or enhance) the services we provide
There was a time I had 100% trust. It's each and every man/woman for himself/herself now. Surely, this can't be news...can it?