retail sales associate

sales consultant

software engineer

associate director

sales associate

Optus

A Typical Day at Work:
Each day feels unpredictable and disorganized. With unclear priorities, employees spend much of their time figuring out what’s expected of them, leading to a stressful workday. The absence of a structured workflow or solid guidance makes it difficult to stay focused and productive.

What You Learned:
The experience teaches adaptability and the ability to work independently in a challenging environment. However, it also reinforces the frustration of working without clear direction or support, limiting any meaningful personal or professional growth.

Management:
Management is disconnected and often unprofessional, lacking clear communication and consistency. Favoritism is prevalent, and leadership fails to provide the guidance or support necessary for employee success. This absence of strong leadership contributes to confusion and low morale.

Workplace Culture:
The culture at UGT is toxic, driven by favoritism, gossip, and a lack of trust. Employees feel alienated, often fearing retaliation for speaking up or expressing concerns. This environment undermines collaboration and fosters a sense of insecurity and frustration.

The Hardest Part of the Job:
The hardest part is navigating the constant uncertainty and lack of support. The ambiguous policies, unclear goals, and fear of retaliation create a stressful atmosphere that makes it difficult to feel secure or confident in your work.

The Most Enjoyable Part of the Job:
The brief moments of accomplishment when you complete tasks or help customers can provide satisfaction. However, these moments are overshadowed by the overarching challenges, making them fleeting and insufficient to offset the overall frustration of the work environment.

I had a deeply disappointing experience working at Optus. Here are some critical issues I encountered:

Lack of Proper Training:
New employees receive minimal training, which is limited to guidance from team leaders and other team members only. I was told there is a structured training program however was never provided even though one week into work. As a result, it’s nearly impossible for new hires to fully understand the systems and processes.

Unreasonable Expectations:
The company expects new employees to make sales within the first two weeks. Given the inadequate training, these expectations are unrealistic and create undue stress. Many new hires are let go if they fail to make sales quickly, regardless of their potential or effort.

Unfair Leave Policies:
If you need to take leave for any reason, be prepared for possible termination. The company does not accommodate new employees who require time off, which fosters a hostile and insecure work environment.

High Turnover:
The combination of poor training, unrealistic expectations, and inflexible leave policies results in a very high turnover rate. This creates a lack of continuity and makes it difficult for the team to function effectively.

No Job Security:
There is absolutely no job security at Optus. During my brief tenure (1 week) two other new hires (2 days, the other one 3 weeks) were also fired for not meeting sales targets within an unreasonable timeframe. This revolving door of employees adds to the overall instability and negative atmosphere.

In conclusion, my experience at Optus was highly negative. The lack of support, unrealistic expectations, and absence of job security make it a challenging and stressful place to work. I would not recommend this company to prospective employees.

I did enjoy the working with the people at Optus, always helpful and friendly.

Good campus facilities, starting to show it's age now though.

The promoted outward facing culture is for "well being" and "moving forward", the actual culture from management is maximise ARPU and outsource jobs, or in other words, profits.

Redundancies happen every 6 months without fail.

No career progression really, more than once  the manager's mate get the position over better qualified people. 

Executives are Singapore placements, seems they're well in over their heads, floundering. 

Outages and churn higher than expected. The competition have it all over them. .

When the execs get up and talk about their grandiose plans, spending billions on this and billions on that we all nod our heads in in front of them, but shake our heads behind them. The profits are a result of reduced head count, not increased business.

The culture is outsource-centric, absolutely no consideration to saving Australian jobs and all about shifting millions to SingTel so they can fund their Asian market development.

For these reasons I'd be glad to see Optus fold.

I expect Singtel will sell the Optus cash cow once 5G is embedded and the profits and operations stripped clean, say in 4 years. 

Almost all intellectual property is outsourced and outages abound...I would walk around and see entire floors of food starved 457 contractors (the ones replacing Aussie jobs) and see them swaying in their chairs by mid afternoon, that's when the major outages occurred.


Would I work there again? not full time, contracting has more job security.

I'm usually the first person there to prep the store for the day, all the general cleaning gets done and as Team Leader it's my job to enter the previous days figures and contracts into the spread sheets and establish the daily targets that need to be met by all staff including myself. Next I read or reply to all the emails recieved via outlook from the previous afternoon and evening. After this is done the store gets opened and we are ready for business.
My job requires me to get to know each customer's requirements and personal preference, budget allowences and expectations. As the Business Communications Specialist I mainly handle clients that own or run a business. We cater for all telco needs from wireless internet, mobile phones to land lines and ADSL. 
The hardest part of my job is dealing with the unsatisfied or upset clients and those whom have been misinformed. But the best part is when I tackle their problem for them and present them with the best outcome available. It's always nice to see the look of relief of their face.
I enjoy my current job however there is no room to grow and progress in the company. My manager is lovely and has become a friend whom has taught me so much. 
The most important thing I have learnt from this position is that clients respond to people who can relate to them and show real interest in their business, as it is their livelyhood.

The work environment is unfortunately not conducive to a positive experience. Employees seek an environment where they can thrive, learn, and contribute effectively. When a workplace falls short of providing this, it can impact morale, job satisfaction, and overall productivity.

A supportive work culture is essential for employee well-being and performance. When issues arise that create an unsatisfactory atmosphere, it's important for organizations to address them promptly. Open communication, mutual respect, and opportunities for growth are foundational elements that employees look for in a workplace.

In situations where the work environment is perceived as negative, employees may find it challenging to stay motivated and engaged. This can lead to a lack of enthusiasm for their tasks, lower job satisfaction, and even turnover.

Employers should strive to create a work environment where employees feel valued and empowered. By addressing concerns, offering professional development opportunities, and fostering a positive workplace culture, organizations can work towards ensuring that employees have a supportive context to thrive in their roles.

In conclusion, a work environment that is not viewed as favorable can have repercussions on employee engagement and overall success. It's crucial for organizations to acknowledge and address such concerns to create a more positive and productive workplace for everyone involved.

The best that can be done is performed at a retail level among floor staff (including managers & senior staff) but I can't emphasize enough the ridiculous expectations set by the organisation are.

Obviously there's a sales element, and while that can be stressful it's also a part of the industry. What's most grating is the road blocks, red tape and arbitrary obstacles put in your way to succeed. The procedures got less and less intuitive over time. The hurdles they make you jump through feel unrewarding for the effort you put in. The systems and tools they expect you to use are broken and inconsistent, and I speak for multiple peers and staff when I say that outages and crashes were expected and in those scenarios you can kiss up to a whole day's performances goodbye.

The most efficient way to get this job done is to not care about customers. You will burn so much time and effort apologising and explaining the banalities of the company. A sad day we live in that upper management not caring about the staff is expected among a vast majority of orgs, but the extent to which Optus' upper management doesn't care is shocking. Save your mental health, get a sales job with greater organisation and success opportunities, there's a lot more around - especially for this pay grade.

*Be prepared for anxiety: The job description is normal for a store manager position but they add so much extra stress that would give anyone anxiety issues
*Very rough treatment: There is no respect shown whatsoever to the store managers by their area managers or the operations manager who is apparently having her nose in everybody's job including area managers.
*incentives & bonuses: Nil. They talk too much about the bonus system called "Beyond Yes' but withhold all and any claimed incentives cards that your store team would have earned. Upon inquiry, they will simply tell you they know nothing about that. It was a nightmare trying to get those incentives. Took 1 long year. That too only happened after the store approached Optus directly. 
*work-life balance: Be prepared to bring your work stress to home and work and attend unpaid  meetings/ attend unpaid workshops on your days off and after work.
*Management: Terrible. There have been 6 area managers in 1 year. No area manager stays longer than a month in the company.
*The only good thing about this job was the store team- that you will have anywhere else as well.

Optus enables the worker to structure their day according to their needs and performance is assessed on predetermined objectives, sales targets and customer satisfaction indices. The organisation management has made a number of strategic errors in the delivery of English Premier League (EPL) and Soccer World Cup content on their various delivery platforms based upon a Singaporean model and failed to appreciate the customer irritation with those processes in the Australian market. It was further complicated when the delivery services became oversubscribed causing outages. The subsequently revenue shortfalls were offset by widespread redundancies. The peer to peer work place culture was good but work flow was reasonably difficult with internal processes supported by delivery work groups off-shored to India and China. Both the time differences and language differences made this the most difficult aspect. The best aspect was the imprimatur to manage your customer base as you saw fit and you could really deliver fantastic outcomes for your customers.

The work was good up until around the GFC, at which point the business decided to cut as many corners as it could while pushing forward in the telco industry.

Management had a habit of being very secretive whilst being quite obvious with their motives (We trained the call centre staff in India to handle our workload) and saving money seemed paramount - over servicing the customer.

Some of the consolidation of the departments left staff drastically overworked and understaffed, however, management was not inclined to perform backfill following the GFC.

The most enjoyable part of the job was the office spaces (lush, well furnished, decent facilities, good location), the staff were awesome people, and the work was good when we had the numbers to cope with it.

The difficult part of the job was essentially being forced to participate in our own redundancy, training offshore counterparts, whilst also managing unreasonable expectations from upper management.

Typical Day:
Check the company news
Open the store
Provide support
Sell to customers - customers were asked to rate their experience
Repair various telecommunications devices
Train new staff
Close the store
Calculate profits and losses 
Work on sales strategies
Install new hardware and software

Management:
Guiding style, leading by example, a large amount of self management taking place and initiative required from all staff. 

The hardest part of the job:
Dealing with customers who have unreasonable expectations of the company and their service. An example of this is a customer who holds the belief that destroying their phone should be covered by the manufacturer's warranty, when of course this can not be the case.

The most enjoyable parts of the job:
Working as a team to solve customer issues, and receiving positive feedback through high NPS (Network Promoter Scores), creating clever and lucrative solutions for customers through exploring further dormant needs.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Retail sales associate 424 salaries reported	$34.83 per hour
Sales consultant 13 salaries reported	$34.62 per hour
Software engineer 13 salaries reported	$111,885 per year
Associate director 6 salaries reported	$198,667 per year
Sales associate 7 salaries reported	$32.14 per hour

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