Vantaggi
I've worked with Walgreens for 10+ years. I started off at the stores as a technician (far from Illinois) and worked hard to finally end up at the corporate office (located in Illinois). Here are the reasons I stay with this company: The 401K is great. Walgreens matches 100% up to 4%. I am able to work from home at least once a week. (This is extremely rare and I am lucky to work for a director that does not mind employees working from home. My director does not like to micromanage and trusts that his employees will get the work done. Almost EVERY manager/director will say they do not like micromanaging, but that's a lie.)
Svantaggi
Compensation: Compensation is insultingly low for the employees that have been with the company for years. External hires will always be paid more than the employees with seniority. This has been the case with every new external hire that has joined my team over the years. Managers will always offer you the lowest salary possible even though they themselves know how valuable you are as an employee. It's almost like they are afraid to fight for the good ones or they know you're a "lifer" and will never leave the company. Lack of job security: Walgreens has been going through a lot of changes with the Alliance Boots merge and although change can be good, too much change too fast along with employees not knowing the end goal (or the reasons for the change) causes everyone to be a little uneasy. Departments are being eliminated and people are losing jobs without an opportunity to transfer internally. What if a department has a hidden gem of an employee, but that person was let go simply because they were in the eliminated department? That's awful and a huge waste, but since it takes more work for WAG management to try and help this employee they would rather let them go. This makes me very nervous because I know I am an excellent employee (my first 2 months here I had 3 different managers/directors ask if I would be interested in working for them) and I don't feel safe from the chopping block. Poor quality of employees: I came to the corporate office thinking I would be working with the elite members of WAG, but I was sadly mistaken. I am not exaggerating when I say almost 70% of the people working at the corporate office fall into a bucket I like to call "people I would never hire." These people are simply working for a paycheck and have no motivation to improve themselves so of course their work is awful. They are just followers/robots that do what is told. I am all for balancing work and life, but when you are at work I need to see work. As for the people in management...it's mostly about who you know and 90% of them have no business being in their roles. I can't blame the employees for not caring though...WAG used to be a great company to work for, but this company could care less about their employees now. Lack of resources/tools: We have Walgreens University (aka WAG U) where employees can attend seminars/classes (Excel or Access), but most are useless. When a useful class becomes available the manager has to approve their employees to attend the class. Managers will not send all of their employees and must therefore choose which employees will go to the class. Of course the manager will pick the employees that need the class the most, which 100% makes sense...except when the people that need it the most are the lazy people on the team who only need the class because they have never taken any time to learn the skill/material on their own. These lazy people on the team will eventually leave Walgreens making the manager look foolish for selecting the wrong people to attend the class and now the class is no longer available. <--This has happened to me 3 times in the last 5 years. Of course I never let that stop me from learning what I needed to learn to move up, but still very frustrating. Finally, if the class you need is not offered at WAG U, management will not pay for you to attend a class taught by an external reputable source/company.