SA Designer Parfums Reviews

It is sad that companies like this exist. - The "leadership" team is incompetent with some members having no industry experience. - Most leadership team members (including the owners) are there to satisfy their egos without having the slightest sense of empathy and listening skills. - There is no care about the employees’ well being, In fact there is no trust in employees whatsoever (and things like face recognition clocking in/out, no sick pay, lowest holiday allowance, no maternity leave scheme, absolute minimum pension contribution, no healthcare plan, no flexible working, etc prove this point in the most sad way possible). - Face recognition clocking in/out: Any normal person would think that devices like this exist for health & safety reasons but you would be wrong in thinking this for this company. In Designer Parfums these devices exist in order to track your presence, the time you arrived and leaved, etc. If you are late a few minutes or if you forget to clock in you receive an email from HR asking why. - No sick pay: if you are sick you are still "forced" to come to the office otherwise the company will not pay you. Can you imagine what is happening in the office during the winter period with sick people coughing, sneezing, etc. in this open plan space ? Certainly not a nice place to be. - When you join the company, they ask to you to sign a document giving them the permission to search you, your belongings and car any time they want in order to see if you took something from the office or warehouse. This I think sums up the opinion and trust that this company has for its employees. - Traditional owners & Traditional mentality: you have probably realised by now that the company is extremely traditional (unfortunately in a bad way, as there are traditional family owned companies that are thriving and are pro-employee). In the era of mobile and flexible working employee empowerment and employee happiness and productivity, Designer Parfums prefers to stay in an 80’s mentality. It goes without saying of course that you will not see a woman having a seat at the board. - No Flexible Working: another proof of the absence of trust towards employees is that the owners and some - if not most - of the board members are against flexible working and working from home. I am hearing now that during the second wave of Covid, after a lot of pressure (through a questionnaire) they allowed working from home a couple of days a week but the owners and board members are not happy about it. - Political environment: under normal circumstances you would not expect such a political environment in a small/medium company but this is far from truth in Designer Parfums. This environment has been cultivated by the owners and the newly consisted "leadership" team and you can see now how this affects the working environment. People are trying to please the board members, they are trying to prove that they are working hard and consequently there is a “backstabbing” mentality and a two-faced approach (again starting from the top and spreading out to the whole company). - High blame culture: As a consequence of the above and because people are trying to prove that they are indeed working and they are better than their colleagues, a high blame culture started appearing, affecting the day to day working life. Yes, you will think that this can be found in many companies and i will agree with you but add this to the back stubbing and the leadership team's bossy way of handling situations and you have the 'secret for success'. - Favouritism: This has always been the case in this company but now it went on to the next level. Surely, this is a strong positive if you are the one who is benefited from that but if you are not then it bothers you. At the end of the day it is all about having a balance and you certainly do not find that here. - Location: it is not ideal. it is about 15 minutes walk from Watford Junction and right next to Watford North station but the latter does not have many trains stopping by. Also, the area itself is quite grim (what you would expect from an industrial area) and the company is located inside / next to its warehouse. There are a few places in waking distance average 15’ minute walk (ASDA , Flourish: this is a bakery and you can find some nice breakfast/lunch options, mini Waitrose by a Shell Petrol Station, McDonalds, etc) which is bearable when it is not raining. Summary - If you are in need of a job no negative review will put you off and this certainly is not the purpose of this review. If you have a choice though then i would think twice before joining this company. - It really comes down to your personal preference as well. If all you want is a 9:00 to 17:30 job and 17:30 off you go, then maybe this can work for you. Also, if you want to use this company as a stepping stone for something else then this could also work. - This company and its owners know how to take a good care of their leadership team (board members) but when it comes to its employees who are doing all the leg-work, they are turning the blind eye. Hence you will see why there is this extremity of reviews and a wide array of them (positive versus negative) on Glassdoor. You can guess who the positive ones are coming from. - No company Values and ethics whatsoever.