Because IKEA is so well regarded on Glassdoor and because of their company mission, it came as a surprise that the Logistics Group contained such a collection of dishonest people.
To start, the salary was shockingly below market. I accepted the position as an investment in my education, as I am neither a native German-speaker nor have I had work experience outside of the US. It seemed like an amenable deal, at least for a few years, in which I would incur a substantial pay cut for the experience and they would get a very qualified person to do their job. I discovered later that the pay is so far below market that one literally cannot afford housing in the area.
The hiring process took nearly 10 months. There seemed to be little sense of urgency on IKEA's part, and the onboarding process was exceptionally disorganized and disjointed. The only way to communicate with people is via email, as no one answers the phone and there is no voice mail, and it seems like no one reads their e-mail or communicates with one another. Often it took weeks to receive a response. IKEA missed several committed dates, including getting me the offer (3 weeks later than committed), scheduling an in-person trip (1 month late), providing the work contract (6 weeks late). Several times during onboarding it seemed that my direct manager was left out of the loop. I was asked to communicate directly with her manager and with HR, so it put us both in an awkward position.
Before I signed the work contract, I was concerned about the 6 month probationary period. It's a risk to quit one's job, sell all of one's things, and move to a new country. I was told that they only knew of one instance in which someone was terminated in that six months and that was because they stole from the company.
I was within weeks of relocating from the US to Germany. My husband had already secured his transfer to Germany, when inexplicably, IKEA called to cancel my work contract. I should be thankful that they did this before I accepted the offer on our house, but they only cancelled the transfer after I'd spent thousands of dollars divesting assets, moving family heirlooms to other family members in the US, sold or vehicles, etc. I was literally within two weeks of moving. They said that there was a reorganization. There were 4 people on the call to tell me about this so-called reorganization. These would be high level managers and HR who said they were re-evaluating the job roles and that they were cancelling all contracts and closing all open positions. The job that I'd been hired for was re-posted the Monday after Friday they cancelled my work contract. I pointed this out via email, and no one responded. The letter that the sent to the worker's council to get them out of the contract stated simply that they were cancelling the contract during the probationary period. If it was true that one had to do something like steal from the company to be fired during the probationary period, I wonder what IKEA told the worker's council.
Be warned. This is a collection of people who do not deal fairly and honestly. I was naive. Had I known that no German citizen would take this role because the pay was so low, I never would have signed on in the first place. IKEA is targeting people from other companies who want to come to the EU by posting their jobs on Glassdoor and other English speaking job sites. The work contract means nothing and the law is not on your side.
