Workplace reviews and discussion: 特力集團＿HOLA＿HOLA CASA＿HOLA Petite＿Crate&Barrel＿特力屋股份有限公司

HOLA Furniture Section (formerly HOLA CASA)

1. The only advantage is for people who want to coast; for those who want to make money, there are practically no advantages.

2. Sales staff in the furniture section only need to move furniture occasionally, and spend most of their time assisting customers.

HOLA Furniture Section (formerly HOLA CASA)

Regarding salary:

1. Pay raises are extremely small. In the past, the company could at least use performance bonuses to explain why raises were so limited, but now the vast majority of employees cannot receive performance bonuses, while salaries remain just as low. For most sales staff with more than ten years of service, their salary after a raise is still lower than the base salary of a new employee.

Regarding company policies:

1. HOLA's price range is fundamentally unsuitable for a uniform-pricing strategy, but the company insisted on implementing one, causing sales to decline sharply over the past six months. The company still does not seem to realize that it needs to change and continues to act unilaterally. Sales should have grown after the pandemic, but instead declined. After failing to make money because of this misguided policy, the company then targeted employee bonuses for cuts.

2. Customers are required to have their purchases shipped within 60 days. After 60 days, a storage fee of NT$100 per day is charged. This makes it even harder to generate sales. Nowadays, home renovations often take at least three months, and few people wait until a renovation is nearly complete before buying furniture. This policy is effectively pushing customers to other furniture stores.

Regarding bonuses:

1. The bonus system becomes harder to qualify for every year. The bonus system introduced during the previous two years was outrageous. When the new bonus system was introduced, it was even applied retroactively to periods before the bonus rules had been announced. Everyone can comment on whether this violates the Labor Standards Act.

2. In June 2023, the bonus system was changed by directly splitting individual sales performance into individual performance and team performance.

Regarding individual performance:

It changed to payouts once every three months, with a very high threshold. The average monthly sales threshold was raised by more than 40%, but the bonus percentage paid was only half of what it had been before. Taking a store with three employees as an example, it is basically impossible for everyone to meet the target. As a result, perhaps only one of the three will meet the target, while the other two will fail to meet their shipping targets and receive no bonus.

Regarding team performance:

The more employees a store has, the easier it is to meet the team-performance target, but then only a small number of people can meet their individual-performance targets. The fewer employees a store has, the easier it is for sales staff to meet their individual-performance targets, but the team-performance target becomes impossible to meet.

Compared with before, for the same sales volume shipped, employees can receive only half the bonuses they used to receive. Compared with the industry as a whole, our base salaries are lower than those at other companies, and our bonus percentages are also lower.

In short: What kind of “happy company” raises the sales-performance threshold by 40% while paying even less? Everyone can think about that.