#understaffed

Do we have any idea on when OHAI is going to hit and how bad it will be? We are stretched thin as it is.

Merle Norman is a great option if there are any near you. Commission is much better than belk, without the insane requests for credit, working in other departments, and understaffing.

Corporate should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to happen. It's bad enough to allow unsafe working conditions in the pharmacy, but the front store is treated like a complete afterthought. Especially should District Leaders and Regional Directors be ashamed for not standing up for their teams and fighting back against corporate and their complete lack of care for those at the store level. 1 or 2 people is NOT a crew!! Understaffing, low wages, unrealistic metrics, unreasonable expectations, ignoring customer complaints about long lines and wait times, where does it end?? If CVS doesn't care about the front store, then get out of the front store business. But DO NOT keep treating the front store like garbage and yesterday's newspaper.

The people at the ground floor are the ones who keep the ship running everyday. Treat them like they matter, because without them, you have nothing.

The cuts have created major disruptions that no one seems interested in fixing. Entire teams are crippled, many managers can't get up to speed (unsurprisingly), and critical gaps in roles and workload go completely unaddressed. Was there ever a real reorganization plan? Pleasing the markets was never a sustainable long-term strategy.

I'm new to this site. I feel like i havent seen many comments from people in PVS under Tom Ap Simon. He was 100% in charge when I came on in 2020. In 2022, they hired a lady to take over PVS so Tom could focus on higher education. This lady was way more personable and professional than Tom in my opinion. She obviously had a vision, and part of that was to create a new department. She hired a black woman for that department who was very qualified based on previous work experience. Not even 2ish years into the role, this competent PVS leader departed. They did not replace her. They said Tommy boy would absorb and handle both Higher Ed and PVS. A few months after our original PVS VP left, our smaller dept head left abruptly. They did not replace her either and instead shoved our department into another that make 0 sense for half of the employees there.

PVS has a goal to increase enrollment by almost 50%. That is an insane metric and didn't even happen during Covid. On top of that, they so far have hired literally no one on the school facing side of things to support these schools/students. I thing they are eventually going to just sell PVS because it's obvious the powers that be don't understand the actual work that's needed to make this business line successful.

Let me run through the state of things. Talented staff are quitting. The ones who stay aren't keeping up with inflation. Some are getting let go anyway. Those of us left are doing triple duty. Clients feel the drop in quality and they're letting us know. Simple requests become week long projects. And to top it off, we've got contractors who don't know what they're doing and don't care to learn. A few are good. Most aren't. This is where we are.

I work in the Service Division, assisting the branches. I want to let you know what is going on. We are all being cross trained on almost all service areas. We were told that it would be a topic or two. They keep adding more and more subject matter in a short amount of time. The training is very minimal, there are a lot of gaps in the training in which we are expected to figure out on the fly when we get a branch call.

I hear the branch team’s frustration when they call in. They are getting transferred around because associates do not know how the answer the question nor the best area to transfer the call. Most of us are doing the best we can with the minimal training. Many of us are SMEs in one area but now are trying our best to answer calls in a totally different area.

This isn’t fair to the branch teams at all. I thank those at the branch that have been patient with me, it really helps to get through a stressful day. I’m sorry the branches are going through this.

The people they chose to cut never made any sense. Now we can't do parts of the job at all, and we're buried in the rest. It feels like they want us to fail.

It's nearly impossible to keep up with the workload. My team lost more people in the latest round. Does anyone actually consider whether teams can still function when making these cuts? Sure doesn't feel like it.

They think they can run the whole store on skeleton crew indefinitely. It's just a matter of time before all of us just stop showing up.

I’d pay to see leadership try handling this workload for even a few weeks.

I'm so tired of this cr-p. They keep layering on expectations while continuing to shrink support. At some point, the math just stops working. I'm done even trying. I might get fired, but I'm not a magician. It is what it is.

Is it just us, or is the hiring ban only 'optional' for certain teams? Anyone heard when they’re planning to unblock reqs? It's a nightmare now. We can't replace leavers

We need some help in the field we have been cut down to a skeleton crew and my manager is non-existent.

It's like everyone forgets once the layoffs are done. There's only so much the rest of us can absorb, and some things just can't be picked up at all. There's never any follow-up, no real attempt to readjust after the cuts, and zero attention to the important work that's simply not getting done anymore.

How we'll continue to function properly after this is beyond me. Nobody thinks about the future, they just care about what they can save right now.

What happens in a situation like this? When it's literally impossible to get everything done with the remaining number of people?

With poor middle management from the branch levels and issues not making it to the top people are fed up. Union talks in play. Drivers not able to take time off, routes sitting, customers not getting deliveries and no help. Warehouse runs way too short and people in place who aren’t fit for the job. Sales is getting fed up!

In the past month, I visited two leading microbiology labs in top U.S. hospitals. One lab had nearly 80 people performing the same task; the other had just five! Why don’t labs just start understaffing like we do! Need more yachts.

Does anyone else feel like the entire fiber and small cell business is in survival mode

Understaffed
Budgetary issues
Expected OT

This whole operation is running on one wheel it feels

Three team members left months ago with no replacement in sight. Their responsibilities have been distributed among the rest of us, and it seems leadership views this as a permanent solution. Is there anything we can do to force them to hire some people, because we're close to our breaking point?

We are so short-staffed right now it's unreal. I'm not sure who they're hiring these days, but the new folks in my store have zero experience and just stand around for most of the day. It's nothing like it used to be. It makes the job ten times harder for the rest of us.

We're already handling too much work, and now we're to lose more people next week? Are you kidding me? What's wrong with people running this place? Can we get them to do our jobs just for a week, just so they can see how bad things already are? We can't afford for it to get even worse.

My whole team has been running on empty all year. We’ve lost too many people, including two critical roles, yet the workload has actually increased. It has been impossible to meet the expectations of a manager who has never even tried to truly manage. No support, no adjustments, no effort to play to the strengths we still have as a team, no redistribution of work to help us through the worst tasks. Working here has never been easy, but this year has been brutal.

Belk is no longer terminating associates anymore for time and attendance issues (late clock in, call outs ect), we were told that because of staffing shortages that associates can only be terminated for egregious wrongdoing (theft ect..). If we terminated every Associate with time and attendance warnings we would literally have no associates left.

im loosing lots of associates. and they are not being replaced.
some days its just two associates on entire sales floor, especially in the mornings. it's worse now that after covid, way worse. i dont think i can take this much longer either.

I'm a FR in the West. We've seen our field and MR numbers go way down, and our home count go up. Nanos are starting to have these issues, scheds going on withthold, flags, PRS putting things on WH and not setting appointments, digital interims putting homes on withhold, and yet we still have the same performance expectation and policies.

There was a guy on the U.S. townhall that was retiring and called out management. I know they weren't happy inside and even though he was the only brave person to speak up, nothing will change. I've been looking for a new job for a year and it's been really difficult. 15 years ago we had AP. It was a pain in the butt, however at least the expectations and home count ratio were more acceptable.

If we go through another round of field layoffs, it's going to absolutely tank our performances. But so many of field guys refuse to unionize, so leadership can keep taking advantage of us and giving us more and more homes, with less field reps, and the same pay.

That’s what we’re looking at from now on.

Half our team is gone, and somehow we’re supposed to keep everything running like nothing changed. I genuinely don’t understand how leadership thinks the same workload is going to get done with half the people. There’s no plan, no adjustment, nothing. How's this supposed to work?

Lately it feels like we’re drowning in projects while only a handful of full-time employees are expected to carry all of it, and somehow the workload just keeps growing. We’re constantly being assigned new tasks without any additional support, yet leadership still questions missed deadlines and wonders what we’re doing with our time. It’s frustrating and exhausting, and I’m honestly wondering if anyone else is dealing with this same imbalance between expectations and actual resources.

We simply can't. My group is already stretched thin, and losing even one more person would wreck everything. We’re barely holding things together as it is. How can they even consider more layoffs?

Each day gets a little worse with BE in charge. There is no communication no big vision. It feels like the last days of a company going out of business where even the shelves are being put up for sale. People are visibly miserable. Like openly talking about how much they hate it here miserable. No one cares anymore. Most are stuck because the job market is cr-ppy. If it turns around this place will lose thousands overnight.

My team has been shrinking for two years straight, and none of the key roles were ever backfilled. At this point, I can’t even remember the last time I left at the official end of the day. The only thing keeping us going is that my teammates are solid. We’ve been carrying the load together, since our manager isn’t exactly helping.

We’ve pushed ourselves because the job market is rough and we’re all trying to hold on to what we have. But we’re getting to a point where the workload just isn’t realistic anymore, and the exhaustion is hitting hard. It makes you wonder what the point is. Fighting so hard for a paycheck every day, when the whole thing could be sent offshore at any moment.

There is a mass exodus of all job categories both in stores and at corporate in the state of North Carolina, dozens and dozens of jobs vacant in all areas (from high level corporate to entry level sales associate) all areas in almost all stores in the state of North Carolina.

Most of these layoffs made zero sense. Some teams were cut down to the point where they can barely function, and what’s worse is that a lot of the experienced, genuinely skilled people were the ones let go. Now whole groups are missing critical roles, people who actually knew how to tie things together and solve problems because they’d built that capacity over time. It’s not just about losing headcount, it’s the quality we lost that hurts the most.

Ever since the last round of cuts, my plate has doubled with no support in sight. I barely get a moment to breathe before something else lands on my desk. Breaks are more of a hope than a reality these days. I am counting down the time until I can move on to something healthier.

Most teams here feel stretched thin, and it shows in how tired everyone looks. Changes keep rolling out without enough people to support them, so the workload lands on whoever is closest. No one wants to take responsibility, so talks drag on forever while we wait for someone higher up to decide. It leaves the rest of us struggling to keep things moving.

It’s happened so many times already that I’m not even sure there are enough people left on some teams to carry the load. Every time they cut, the rest of us get buried.

1. Stores are drastically understaffed
2. Corporate human resources is disconnected from store associates
3. Favoritism is commonplace among associates and managers
4. Customer service is not a strong priority
5. sales numbers (good or bad) are not open discussed
6. High turnover among c suite leadership
7. belk is fending off many lawsuits from both employees and customers
8. Budgets and payroll dramatically cut
9. The company has a reputation for WOKE politics starting at c suite level
10. CEO remains an enigma to associates and managers

Until I read Mike's email

As someone who was bought into his new leadership until reading that it was very disappointing to see the disconnection from reality

Am already working 11-12 hour days 5 days a week without enough time to do everything as we are chronically understaffed and 90% of my time is spent dealing with issues that are a direct result of poor systems in place that have only ever been band aid fixed at best.

There is dead weight at fiserv who should be axed. But majority of people are hard working and doing the best they can with the systems available to them and until reading that email were quite energised at the thought of help being on the way.

Instead they were just told to do more work with no other changes apart from empty catch phrases.

So disappointing and upsetting to read.