Wow, so many talented people gone, so many executives who worked their entire career to get to district, regional, and corporate levels pushed out or pushed down. People still reeling from the announcements and changes last week. No time to come to grips with new roles for those of us lucky enough to be offered a job, still grieving for those close friends and peers who weren't so lucky.
We have always moved fast as a company, rolling out new programs and initiatives before they were fully vetted and thought through, it was one of our strengths. The changes implemented last week took this expectation to a new level. No one knows who to reach out for answers to minor day to day issues and even significant business issues are taking days to get resolved due to talent loss. The company is only now working on updating procedures and starting to communicate them so that the remaining few middle managers know what they should be doing.
Morale is at an all-time low and many of the leaders who were retained landed their jobs based on relationships with key executives and not necessarily their abilities, experience, or leadership skills. Some managers are now doing the work of what had been seven or eight people and it is simply not sustainable.
Apparently, Jeff, Paula, and other senior leaders have forgotten why Macy's and other retailers have had dedicated loss prevention teams over the years. Was the significant increase in shortage last year coming out of annual inventory not a sufficient reminder? Two years of increasingly deeper cuts to loss prevention staffing followed by two consecutive years and millions of dollars in profit erosion.
AP staff eliminated in virtually all Neighborhood stores. Core store AP staffing reduced to just the OAPM or one detective, many of these leaders with little to no AP experience. Who’s going to train these leaders and other new hires, the store manager? Do you know how many incidents of grab and run and shoplifting are happening in our stores?
We need to reconsider this strategy or all of our stores will become neighborhood locations as continual and growing losses related to both internal and external AP activity will soon make many of our stores unprofitable.