Pros
The pros are very few and far in between. The only two things are that you, A. Meet really great people and can make friendships for life, and B. get a free meal every shift you work.
Cons
Where to start? I had been with Protein Bar for a very long time. I started as a TM and gradually worked my way up the ladder, encountering many issues and roller coaster-type ups and down along the way. Now, there is a normal amount of this in the service industry, and upon taking the job it's clear that you're working in a quick serve restaurant and that it will be hectic and always-changing, but Protein Bar really doesn't apply, since they've done a lot of things wrong from day one. Communication in this company is virtually nonexistent. From all the way at the top to the bottom, you will hear one item of information said in five different ways. As a manager, this makes it completely difficult to communicate to employees without them getting, understandably, angry about what to do. Not to mention, this is extremely frustrating for a manager to receive a lot of mixed messages from upper management. Either give GMs more freedom in the stores to make their own decisions (which, with the inexperience of internal hires that probably isn't the best idea,) or outline every single aspect of running a PB store so that there is no confusion. There needs to be more internal, higher-level restructuring and reorganizing to fix their stores. Team Whiteboard is made up of all friends coming from the same background, with some less-experienced hires sprinkled in. The POV of TW from a store front is completely negative. I don't know how anyone is able to stay in that corporate office for longer than 6 months without leaving or getting fired. The turnover at this company is so high already that it's no wonder they can't figure out HR policies and stick with one HR Director. My advice would be to consult with a PR agency that specializes in internal PR to fix this, because they can't get afford with all this inexperience for much longer otherwise they'll end up spending more and more money on constantly hiring managers, team members, and staff. This also looks so horrible to the management at the store level. It's time to grow up and fix the nonexistent Employee Relations in this company, because they're losing a lot of good people because of the disorganization and unfocused priorities. They need to stop expanding so quickly while their current stores are suffering from all this turnover and horribly organized training. Stop caring about expansion and start caring about the people you already have before they all leave. To management, this looks irresponsible and disrespectful, and this will end up costing hoards of money later when you have to scramble to fix stores, as you've already seen. Please, from a PR standpoint, make it required for all TW employees to make their Instagram accounts private. This looks so juvenile from a corporate level, and this is PR Basics 101. Employees can see pictures of upper management drinking together (sometimes in the office, even) and going out. That looks so bad on the company. Hire an actual PR person who specializes in internal PR to fix corporate, then focus on the employees. They all need tons of training themselves. Training at this company is a joke. It seems to be at the back burner of everyone's thoughts. If employees were better trained then PB may not have so many of them leave. Hire someone with a background in education or actual corporate-level training to handle this. Don't leave it up to the current staff. The system for firings is unreasonable for TMs, and should be reevaluated. This also goes for mid-level management. Writing people up so there is a track record of it so it's easier can fire them is obvious to the staff of the intentions. Also, letting go an employee on the spot after they put in their weeks notice as a company policy is completely disrespectful, especially if they have been working there for a while. Also, not having an exit interview for leaving managers looks completely unprofessional. Please hire an outside consultant in the field of Employee Relations to host a mandatory meeting for all managers (TW Members, GMs, and TLs) to attend that's about how to talk to employees and how to communicate in a business setting. There has been so many cases of disrespect and unprofessionalism that I've witnessed internally that can be fixed by a simple class or seminar on communication in the workplace, and how to talk manager to manager, manager to employee, corporate to manager, and corporate to employee. Again, this all should have been done already had there been an effective HR person in the first place. You have a lot of talented people already employeed here. TLs, TMs, there's tons of them with diverse backgrounds and schooling/degrees that can help fix some of these issues. Utilize them and make them feel appreciated, because Employee Relations should be the first priority, and it's not.
