Great business, Terrible Ethos - Deputy Store Manager Lidl Employee Review

Lidl passes off a "Graduate Scheme" for trainee Store Mangers which is unstructured and has almost zero adequate training because it is left entirely to Store Managers, who either put it at the bottom of their list of priorities or have a vested interest in not training graduates properly. District Managers will talk a lot about "shadowing". However it rarely takes place in practice. The company deliberately operates understaffed stores and gives employees tasks which add little value yet have to be completed. This creates a situation where the employee can almost never achieve their quotas and will constantly be threatened with losing their job. Even useful procedures, such as checking the temperature of deliveries are rarely adhered to because employees do not have sufficient time. Managers with a fixed number of hours invariably have to work many more because stores are so deliberately understaffed to keep prices low.