About The Works Stores Ltd
About our culture 💛💙
🥳 The Works is an awesome place to… well, work! Our atmosphere is supportive, friendly and inclusive. A second home-from-home where you can be your best and authentic you.
📚 Our environment is always moving and full of energy. Yet we still make space to share must-watch TV recommendations and our favourite page-turners. –
News & Updates
21 February 2023
🚀 A lovely employee story from Dawn - Store Manager
💜 Thanks for all the hard work, Dawn. And we love the purple hair! 💙💛
Welcome to The Works!
As the UK’s leading discount retailer of arts and crafts, books, toys and stationery, our philosophy is simple; we want all our customers to find something new and exciting every time they visit a Works store, hence the motto "What Will You Discover?"
From humble beginnings in 1981, The Works has gone on to become one of the UK’s most successful and exciting retailers, with surging sales and a rapidly growing workforce. We now operate over 500 profitable stores across the UK and Ireland, and plan to add a further 50 to this portfolio over the course of the next 12 months.
It’s not just on the high street where we’re thriving either; our web shop is becoming increasingly popular and we’re always looking at how we can develop our offering and channels to ensure we’re meeting constantly evolving consumer needs.
In May 2019, we proudly opened our 500th store in Winchester. In typical The Works fashion, we celebrated this event at the store and throughout the company, offering various promotions to all of our colleagues, including doubling our staff discount!
We also opened our brand new, custom built, Support Centre and warehouse facility at Hams Hall Distribution Park, Coleshill, Birmingham in February 2017. This enables us to provide the highest level of support for all of our store colleagues throughout the UK and Ireland, as well as set us up for our growth plans over the next few years.
We know that we wouldn't have achieved any of the above without our hardworking and dedicated colleagues. We equally know that we won't be able to achieve our goals and improve as a company without the same hardworking and dedicated colleagues.
As we grow, so does the need to grow our family of colleagues in all positions. We admit that retail isn't for everyone...it is very hard work at times, both physically and mentally, but it can be really rewarding too!
We are extremely proud of what we have achieved at The Works, and equally proud of what we are trying to do to improve on everything so far.
There honestly hasn't been a better time to join us!
The Sunday Times Top 25 Best Big Company to Work for - 2020
We are delighted to announce that for the second year running we have made The Sunday Times Top 25 Best Big Companies to Work for list, placing 18th in 2020.
Here is a montage of our celebrations on Best Companies Day 2020!
Working in Stores
If you’re looking for the kind of career that really keeps you on your toes, you’ll find it at our stores. Why? Because we’re people who do, remember. We love trying out new products, and here you’ll spend much of your time getting to grips with as many as 250 new lines each week, before showing our customers how to squeeze the most fun out of them.
In fact, our stores really do feel like they’re part of the community - they’re warm, welcoming, friendly and supportive, and working here is just like being part of one big family. It’s no wonder that many of our people used to be customers themselves!
But there are also lots of tough and challenging moments, too. Along with serving our customers, you’ll be on your feet for much of the day, unloading pallets, filling shelves, and getting stuck in to whatever it takes to keep your store running smoothly.
When we say our stores are for people who do, we really mean it.
Working in Distribution
Our distribution department has a huge challenge: getting all those amazing products out to all of our amazing stores so that our customers can get their hands on them.
Your biggest challenge yet
You’ll find the team at our Store Support Centre, working hard to meet that challenge of keeping huge numbers of our products moving. We’re talking around 150,000 items per week (that’s about 1500 pallets) out of peak times, and up to 300,000 items per week (that’s 3,000 pallets) when we’re at our busiest!
Across the department, we have a Supply Chain Director, a Head of Distribution, Ecommerce and Retail Operations Managers, Shift Managers, Team Leaders, Administrators and more. And when things are busy, we move to a 24 hour operating schedule for 5 days per week. With up to 100 people per shift working a range of shift patterns, from part-time to full. It’s a fun and energetic place to be, and everyone gets involved in picking, despatch, putaway, replenishment, goods-in, returns, and more.
Working in Store Support Centre
When it comes to variety in your working day and in your career, our Store Support Centre has it all. Lots of different teams, loads of different challenges, and hundreds of people who do - all from a huge range of backgrounds and walks of life, and all working together to keep our stores ticking over and our customers happy.
A run down of the departments:
People Team
Finance
Customer Services
IT
Property
Supply Chain
Trading & Buying
Digital & Marketing
We now have over 500 stores throughout the UK and Ireland...and we are constantly adding more...!
We all experienced a very proud moment in reaching our 500th store at The Works in May 2019.
As we keep on growing our store portfolio, we need to keep growing our workforce. We are always looking for talented and enthusiastic people to join our teams.
This could be in one of our amazing stores, in a field based role, or at our Store Support Centre in Coleshill, near Birmingham.
Giving something back...
We are extremely proud to support Cancer Research UK and in May 2019, reached the milestone of raising over £500,000.
We have so many fantastic colleagues that have helped us achieve this, partaking in cycle rides, muddy runs, walks and running a marathon!
The Works PLC - An amazing moment as we listed on the London Stock Exchange
Join us as we reach a momentous milestone in the history of The Works.
We are extremely proud of our history at The Works, especially the journey we took to list on the London Stock Exchange in 2018.