In 1999 it would seem that employees were in general happier than they were in 2003, and that LCBO had been heading in the wrong direction over that period. Looks like it may have been worse after 2003 according to the findings in the last copy of the Employee Union Newsletter that I received (July 2004) which had a telling article on pg 3. In this article it seems the Union filed a Freedom of Information request to find out how many employees were on a modified work plan (they say 7.2% of 6,747, which would be about 485 people).
According to the article:
82% feel their modified work plan is not working for them
67% feel the LCBO does not adhere to Doctor's recommendations
63% feel the Store Manager does not adhere to Doctor's recommendations
55% feel that fellow staff members do not adhere to modified restrictions
67% of modified workers are asked to exceed their current limitations
41% of modified workers feel they are not valuable members of their store
45% of modified workers feel they are not given the opportunity to advance.
I have no way to know what has happened since I retired in 2004, and am unwilling to pay high fees to find out.
In 1999 it would seem that employees in general thought that they were fairly paid, and that they felt LCBO was giving customer service at a level similar to other workers in the Canadian population.
But - in 1999 the following statements appeared in the report to employees:
Employee-Related Communication: Generally, employees do not believe that the LCBO does a good job in communicating to employees about issues that affect them. Employee-related communication was rated more negatively by LCBO employees than by those in the general Canadian working population
and, Management of People: The extent to which the LCBO rewards and recognizes good performance and manages or take action on poor performance was rated by employees as the most significant challenge.
also, LCBO Management: Employees gave a low rating to corporate management with respect to decision-making skills, "people skills" and helping employees manage stress. LCBO employees are more negative than workers in the Canadian working population in their views about management effectiveness.
There were about 40 questions on this survey, and the five lowest scoring questions were:
65% Disagree
The LCBO does a good job of terminating poor performers.
54% Disagree
The LCBO does a good job of providing incentives for good performance.
49% Disagree
The LCBO does a good job of managing poor performers to help them improve.
44% Disagree
The LCBO does a good job of ensuring performance measurement is consistently applied across all divisions.
44% Disagree
The level of trust between senior management and employees is good {note this question was not reported back on, so it is not possible to determine how many actually agreed with the statement}.
For the sake of the many good people still toiling at LCBO I hope that things have improved since 2004. They seem from here to have run downhill until then.