Pros
6% Company match to 401K Recent elimination of Division Managers and their personal biases from the annual bonus program
Cons
First and foremost, the single sentence 4 & 5 star ratings you are reading on Glassdoor are from an initiative by the company asking for reviews. This gives you a small glimpse of the deceit you will be asked to perform on a day to day basis. Much, if not all of what has been written in the 1 & 2 star reviews is absolutely true and I will do my best to not rehash all of it, but just know there are hundreds of employees reading those reviews and nodding their head in agreement. Now I know nothing I write here will make a difference to the company, they won't change the way they do anything. They believe their plan is the path to being #1 in each category, though there is no track record of BAT being a leader in any category. Am I a disgruntled employee? You're damn right I am. This was once a job I looked forward to and I would recommend to others. It was filled with challenges that pushed your business sense. On most days you would work with partners to mutually grow both of our businesses. You would come home to your family in a good mood and it provided for a good life for me and my family. Now BAT has killed all of that. You come home and just want to hide from all responsibility. Dread sets in on Sunday afternoons knowing your have to go back to your job the next day, because that's all it is, a job. It's no longer a career. If you come to work here you will be frustrated, angry, unmotivated and disliked by your accounts. Your daily routine will be operating under the gun as HQ fails to deliver initiatives in a timely manner and are even slower getting you supplies needed for the initiative. You will spend your time reading addendum after addendum in company communications because the wrong information was given the 1st time. You will reset or expand a category you set your last visit and more than likely the time before that all the while the competition is outselling you in 1/2 the space with less styles. You will go to your car and realize your out of particular parts needed and they won't come off backorder for months. You will already have an unmanageable workload from the company but it will be pushed even higher by your Division Manager in an attempt to justify their job, which there is no justification to have the number of Division Managers we have. You will be forced to send weeks and weeks and weeks worth of products into your accounts as the back stock grows larger and larger. You will introduce new products that you know have no chance in hell of being successful, and good luck finding room for them because all the space is taken by the past 10 failed launches. If by chance the company launches a good product they will be unable to meet demand, out of stocks will come and any momentum we had will quickly go back to the competition. You will pray you can make it back to your car before the store owner remembers your the company that is tying up all of their money in useless inventory and screams at you or even throws things across the room. All this happens in your 1st call of the day and you've got to run the gauntlet 5-7 more times each day. For 18+ months management will tell you they know improvements are needed and then out of the other side of their mouth they will tell you this is the new way of working and YOU will have to adjust. The greatest adjustment needed is for current employees and future employees to see the writing on the wall and know jobs in the field are severely slashed by 2025. Our role as business advisor and partner is gone. We are operating as overpaid merchandisers and the programs being tested and put in place by BAT is to eliminate the need for the majority of field employees by that magical date of 2025. The build up of departments at HQ will manage the business from a central location and with a few key chains. Those left in the field will check boxes and report data back to HQ at a much lower salary.
