Screwfix Germany, a swan song – or: Screwfix isch over!
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
My personal conclusion after 4 years of Screwfix Germany: A shame, it could have been great! The business modell had potential, ideas and know how where there but ignored. At no time no one from HQ seemed to have a plan or idea about what to do with Screwfix Germany. Leadership was incompetend and busy with turf wars. Top level hiring decisions were made poorly and gambled away the last chance of sucess for Screwfix in Germany because of incompetence and egomania.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Since no one has ever sincerely thanked anyone for anything at Screwfix Germany I would like to use this as an opportunity to give a big thank you to everyone who invested themselve into Screwfix Germany in the course of the years. Many thanks to the many cool people that I had the pleasure of getting to know and to work with, at least at the beginning of my Tour-de-Screwfix. Despite the unreal amount of stress and lost lifetime I can honestly say that I learned a lot for live and for my career. Thanks to all the folks that brought their creative energy to Screwfix and consciously made the decission against cheating their way through on the expense of others. All the best for your professional and personal future! Learning from Screwfix Germany means to learn for life!
Verbesserungsvorschläge
Now that the Screwfix Zombie is finally dead, does it even make sense to write about it? As a warning on who to recognize a toxic workplace and a lecture on who to fail entering a foreign market it might. For instance: How can it be reconciled that knowing that the place will shut down to keep hiring people just to send them home two weeks later? How could it have ever paid of applying no strategy whatsoever apart from copying UK approaches 1:1 while surpressing any chance of innovation? How is it okay to not provide suitable working conditions? How is it economic to fly in people for 1.6 million a year that were never commited and do nothing but damage that the german staff was never equiped or allowed to fix? This is textbook on how expanding into new markets fail. Maybe it was never intended to get this thing of the ground, we will never know.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
Either you accepted that you were helpless and stoped tilting at windmills or you were out. No vision, no mission no strategy. Just chaos. Those who read prior posts on this site know what was going on. Textbook toxic.
Kommunikation
Pretty much the usual, important things you were not told and unimportant things clogged your mailbox. Due to the lack of a clear hierarchy and leadership everyone and their mom bombarded you with requests, be it locally or from the parent company. Contradicting instructions or absence thereof, whatever supported the current state of affairs best.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
The German gang: At the beginning a lot of good people from a lot of different backgrounds. Diversity is definetly a good thing and in the case of Screwfix Germany an asset! However, in the course of the Screwfix endgame after some purges intentionally only drones were hired that looked good and could never put their manager at risk through actually doing a good job. A real waste. Team cohesion was good in the individual departments because there was usually a common enemy that brought everyone together. Be that the respective superior, another colleague, another department or top level management. Some departments were even run like sects. Greetings to Munich! The British colleagues were never really a help because they were not commited to Screwfix Germany but only to their individual careers. Usually after one or two tours they moved up the ladder in UK or went into retirement. I generally had the impression that only people were sent that someone wanted to get rid off or promoted.
Work-Life-Balance
Since it was hire and fire unpaid overtime was the norm for everybody I knew. I gave a lot of lifetime to this company through about 200 extra hours a year initially. To be fair, that number later declined massively during the Screwfix endgame because everyone in their right mind could see that everything was falling apart.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
German management members were either victims, perpetrators or both in dealing with implementing the nonsense from HQ. I will never forget how some disappeared for days without notice and obviously kept on going on medication. Also walking out in the middle of a sentence after not being satisfied with an answer was the norm. It was as low as one could sink interpersonally. Needless to mention the usual playing games and pitting everyone against each other, not standing up to anyone and making our department everyones playball. Eventually German management gambled away Screwfixs last chance because of putting ego and personal gain before entrepreneurial competence. UK management was going on road trips for days in rented Audi TTs with their spouses and whithout any apparent added value to the company. Whenever the door swung open and the UK trolley gang entered after arriving from their Frankfurt accomodation it felt like their was this sense of party in the air instead of professionalism. I generally had the feeling the Screwfix Germany was the sandbox for kids and juveniles where they could mess around with a blank cheque and no controll from parent-hq whatsoever.
Interessante Aufgaben
Since there were no processes or system support you had to be really good in organising yourself and working with Excel spreadsheets. Self organisation and getting a thick skin were definetely the most interesting tasks.
Gleichberechtigung
Everyone was equal as victims of the work environment with only very few exceptions. Greetings to Munich!
Umgang mit älteren Kollegen
See above.
Arbeitsbedingungen
Oh dear, general working conditions. No processes, not enough staff. Constrained into tiny offices with almost no daylight and windows in an old factory like hall. 10Mbit internect connection for 40 people and IT services from hell. No real IT systems, Excel sheets for EVERYTHING and the risk that whenever you opened a ticket with IT that after things are worse than they were before. Water taps connected to a fire hydrant resulted in half the company getting sick once, cleaning staff that never really cleaned but were on the phone all the time, AC not working in the summer, heating not working in the winter, bad sanitary conditions (rotting food in the fridge, bad cleaning of toilets and door handles) and old office furniture. HQ was always behind with paying the bills, phones were all disconnected once not even to mention unpaid supplier bills. Parties were wolf-of-wallstreet like.
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
The usual white-washing sustainability reports were made.
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
Salaries were up to individual negotiation with the usual tendency to have a big gap between people that actually did their job and management.
Image
Whoever read the comments on this side new what was going on. Still people were hired up to two weeks before closure was made official and then fired right after. If the Screwfix Germany Zombie would not be dead by now the real face of he company would be well known for sure. But now it is just another foot note in „how not to expand in a foreign market“.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
If you survived long enough you would eventually move up given the high staff turnover before you burned out.