Pros
H&M has seven key values that comprise its corporate culture. It encourages team unity and values collective contributions, new ideas, individual right to take initiative, to express self freely, and to work in a straightforward manner while keeping costs low. The flat-line organization structure encourages open communication and employee engagement. The company believes firmly in promoting within and when it sees the right individual it attempts and often succeeds at developing and growing the individual. H&M also hosts quarterly workshops led by management employees trained on important topics such as labor relations, sexual harassment and leadership. Feedback is encouraged and is an essential part of the workplace. The company strongly believes in learning through one's own mistake. The idea that everyone is a sales associate first keeps everyone humble and the company values life/work balance by strongly disapproving of overtime work and works flexibly with individuals to schedule requests. Upon coming on board everyone goes through a structured, paid initial training that varies in length according to position to prepare for the actual job. H&M offers one of the best benefits package in the industry.
Cons
Individual contribution is not readily recognized, and in most stores this creates a huge accountability issue and disengagement from job. Because over half of management staff is internally promoted many of them have no prior knowledge as to how to actually manage employees apart running a sales floor, and they're unable to bring in outside perspective or fresh ideas to enhance the company to a next level. This company's operations department is one of the most old-school and inefficient in the industry; it lacks an inventory tracking system, has just gone to a computer employee tracking system from paper-tracking system in the past year, and spends millions of dollars each year in payroll toward manual markdowns, stock checks (visual), etc. The volume and pace at which all of the stores run are too grueling for most employees, and the company has one of the highest employee turn-over rates in the industry. While things like security, employee policies, and customer information are extremeley structured, other things like corrective action, business operations and merchandising standards are relatively free-form and totally inconsistent throughout the company. Although information is exchanged freely across the entire organization, often messages and understanding are inconsistent.