Ladbrokes (Ladbrokes)

Member Name: truffellady

Product:	Ladbrokes
Date:	07/06/09 (454 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good hours for students

Disadvantages: poor training

I have just finished working for Ladbrokes after 5 years in the job, the last 3 as a manager. Before that I worked in another large bookmakers for 5 years as an assistant manager.

Ladbrokes has some good points and some bad points. It is very good for students due to flexible working hour and flexible contracts. You can be contracted to a variety of hours as a cashier ranging from 5 to 35 hours per week and your hourly rate is competitive for the industry. The shop opening hours vary between shops but are typically 10.15 - 9.30 Mon to Fri, 10.00 - 9.30 Sat and 11.00 - 6.00 Sun. Nearly all cashiers work weekends. Managers and deputy managers are paid due to there grade, so salary is dependant on your own skills and experience plus how well your shop has performed against its targets the previous year. There is also a yearly bonus based on shop performance that everyone is entitled to that is payed every March.

All training for ladbrokes staff is on the job and now a days mainly on the computer.
As a cashier at Ladbrokes you would have to take bets and pay out bets and input the bet information, do board displays, give out sports information ( that is easily accessible on the ladbrokes text system), do small shop tidies, serve refreshments (some shops only), and be in control of your till and doing till checks.
A managers role is quite like that of the cashier but has a few more duties including opening and closing the shop, doing staffing rotas, ordering supplys and keeping the shop running smoothly, sorting out any customer complaints or any errors or problems in the day to day running of the shop.

As a ladbrokes employee you have a base shop, this is the shop you will work in the majority of the time, some times due to sickness or holidays you may be required to work in a local shop. When this is the case you will have all travel expenses paid. Also if you are a student it is normally possible to transfer shops during the holidays so you continue to work near your home then transfer back to your own shop when uni starts again.

Now the bad points, over the past 10 years the betting industry has changed quite dramatically. When I started there was less than 20 Sundays a year and it was double pay, plus double pay for bank holidays, this is no longer the case and all new employees are now on single pay for both, also it is now all year round night racing, when I started it was only night racing in summer now ladbrokes close at 9.30 all year round and in my opinion this can only lead to more robberies and a bigger security risk. Plus due to the introduction of computers training has gone down hill,more and more managers have no idea what there doing if there computer doesn't tell them and this is leading to more customer complaints.

Plus theres the security issue. Not all shops are fully up dated with cameras and I myself got robbed at knife point 3 years ago and it has happened in the same shop since. Some shops are run down and need refurbishment, some of the staff areas are horrible and lots of them are to small to sit in to eat your dinner. Ladbrokes seem to spend money on big town center shops and leave the little shops alone.

The biggest plus point is the nice regular customers, after years of seeing the same people every day you get to know them,you get to know whats going on in there lives and they are almost like friends. They are the only thing I will truly miss.

Summary: good if you are interested in sport