Business analysts put Gamestop at the 10th Worst Employer spot, citing pre-order woes.
The worst job ever story; everyone’s got one, and far too many of them are inspired by people’s experiences in retail. The business news site 24/7 Wall St – a Delaware-based internet news company financed by institutions like MSNBC and The Huffington Post – has collected employee review data and, from that data, extracted a list of the worst employers in America. Gamestop made the list at #10.
24/7 Wall St only considered those companies with 300 or more negative Glassdoor reviews, looking specifically for the bottom 10% of the total pool. That gave them a pool of 19 companies to examine, and they eliminated 8 straight away as those weren’t publicly traded companies. That left 11, which 24/7 Wall St then examined to see why they had attracted such high levels of employee dissatisfaction.
Gamestop, according to 24/7 Wall St, is a company “under pressure.” It owns too much brick-and-mortar and its digital distribution platform is small compared to the rest of its operation. But the big sticking point was sales. “Employees appear to regularly complain that the company privileges sales above customer service,” according to the report, with preorders – trapping customers into paying in advance for an unknown quantity – attracting the most bile. “Likely adding to poor customer service, reviews point to high turnover,” the report goes on to say, which basically means employees are deserting the company in droves. Poor leadership was also cited as a general factor affecting all the companies on the worst employer list. “Notably, almost all of the CEOs of the companies on our list get very low ratings from employees.”
Not that this will come as much of a surprise to Gamestop customers, or former employees. It’s not as if Gamestop has been having a great time lately, and it’s true that some of its economic problems are as much to do with the market as they are with the company. Still it does beg the question; will Gamestop change and, if not, how long can it last with its current business model?
Source: Kotaku, 24/7 Wall St Wire
