Pros
Although the company continuously implements the latest technology aimed at easing the workload on Center employees, staffing levels have been cut to the extent that all but guarantees customer-service issues, a hostile work environment and staffing gaps at busy Centers due to Senior management's ever-tightening rein on overtime. Use of metrics to measure Center performance can be helpful in identifying a Center's strengths and weaknesses. However, Senior management tends to go overboard by measuring certain parameters too intensively and extensively, frequently resulting in unavoidable customer-service issues, delays in service and increasing pressure on harried employees. Benefits include a flexible 401K to which the company contributes a limited matching contribution to the periodic employee contribution. Starting wages for entry-level Center workers are geared just a notch above those typical for the retail industry, so those early-career employees may have trouble with what amounts to a forced-savings plan. It is possible for well-performing Center employees to get a promotion and/or transfer to other Centers nationwide.
Cons
Unfortunately, FedEx Office Senior management is driving the nation's foremost reprographics company into the ground. The single, most confounding Senior management initiative is to trim staffing to the bone, prohibit overtime and expect each Center's manager (the only salaried position in even the biggest-volume Centers) to fill-in the staffing gaps. These gaps are particularly evident in Centers open 24 hours 7 days a week. Senior management doesn't give a hoot about anything the front-line staff has to say. There is no way for Center employees to frankly discuss work-related issues with Senior management. This situation all but guarantees labor unions to become involved sooner or later. Center staff is largely detained in their assigned Center without any opportunity whatsoever to observe practices at other Centers, let alone share tips to improve personal and work-group performance. Training is unavailable on topics such as "How to Deal with Difficult Customers" and "How to Get the Most Out of the Canon Printer/Copier." In recent months, increasing pressure has been applied to prompt each and every Center employee to sell the Product of the Month to each and every customer, as if the revenues derived from the sales of pens, pencils, reams of copy paper and USB drives will bring the company to the Promised Land. Product of the Month gives Senior management one more metric which ranks each Center employee by units sold per month. Hourly employees' wages in the retail Centers are lower than those at FedEx Corporation's other operating companies, which are in the transportation industry.