Wren Kitchens reviews

3.5

59% would recommend to a friend

(2,549 total reviews)
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Tofiq Malik

63% approve of CEO

55% positive business outlook

Wren Kitchens has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 2,549 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Wren Kitchens employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Retail & Wholesale industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

3K reviews
1.0
Oct 23, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Colleagues were helped with how to manage working there and how to get through a day. Helped with plans and designs.

Cons

Management are selfish and treat designers like rodents. Belittled, bullied, talked down to, shouted at. Don't get respect and are expected to empty bins or mop floors. Paid very little and commission structure is harsh and unfair. You have to not care about the customer to make any money in the job. Treated like scum if you don't have appointments and considered to be wasting company time. A horrid company that hates both its staff and customers. - £20,000 monthly threshold is shocking. A designer must put £20k in the till each month before they can make any commission. That's a quarter of a million pounds a year from each designer just to work at Wren. - Work every weekend. Work from 9am until 8pm every Wednesday because "Offers end". 9 hour on average working day. 1 hour unpaid lunch. Have to be there 15 mins early for a brief so you go from agreeing to 40 hours a week to it being over 47 hours and being paid just £400 a week until you get commission. - Constantly hounded to get deposits as fast as possible to satisfy the manager's greed and ego but we are the ones who suffer if they cancel. If you do 5 sales in a week and get a £25k cancellation, that puts you back at the start again. You have to make back what was cancelled even though it didn't cost the company but it costs the designers. That would mean those 5 sales that were put on are now Wren's to profit 100% from. Meanwhile we suffer because we take a deposit from a customer who later asks for a no hassle refund which they will get and we have a debt to pay before we get commission again. So Wren's business model is to get the designers to put their neck on the butchers block at all times so they sell more kitchens for free and work harder to make money. 4 times as hard to make the same money. This is how Malcolm Healy really made his fortunes by exploiting his staff. FREE ISSUES - If there is a problem with an order a customer receives then that charge falls on the designers. Wren don't suffer. They are quite happy to blame the designer and take £100s out your wages for things that are beyond your control and just tell you to keep putting the numbers on. Zero compassion from this company. Treated like scum whether top or bottom of the showroom. Bad attitudes from management. Belittling, daily abuse, calling to their desk for daily lectures that we aren't good enough and to justify our jobs. Management love treating staff like their toys and can be very pety when things don't go their way. A constant feeling that we could be fired and replaced. Every designer gets assigned a kitchen to keep clean and management can walk you round like a school child checking each drawer and cupboard for dust or anything to pull you up for. They don't like you socialising. They would rather you were busy somehow even though you are up to date but they keep giving us jobs to do like we are costing the company money just talking to each other. Names getting said on the radio constantly to go to management desk for a daily dress down and told you aren't good enough and need to be making the manager more money. Even though you may have sold £8,000 worth of kitchens after you've paid you're threshold, a £16,000 cancel comes in and now your £8000 kitchen commission gets absorbed by the cancellation so I now owe Wren £8000 before I can make money on the original £8000 kitchen. So I have to work twice as hard for the money I earned and still manage the free kitchens we give to Wren. All we work for in the end is the delivery bonus. That is just unfair at best. Phones ring constant but GM doesn't pick it up. Expects us to fix each issue but doesn't realise we need to ask designers for advice or help but they think we are still socialising. Where else do you pay £250,000 a year to work and be victimised, bullied and abused on a regular basis? To be spoken to like a child from a pack of cult leaders. Is this really the #1 Kitchen Retailer? STAY AWAY!!

1.0
Mar 14, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Can make good money Team are great Nice showroom Good training at the HQ

Cons

You have to work 2 weeks straight over Christmas and New Years without a day off (was promised to be paid overtime but wasn’t) Work every weekend and late shifts up to 10pm Miserable management team who only care about figures Appointments get given to the top sellers meaning those who are new or who aren’t doing as well aren’t going to get the same chances given to them Favourites in the showroom Free issues - designers get charged for problems that aren’t always their fault No work / life balance Super quiet at times meaning I sit at my desk all day doing nothing Super low basic salary You get promised an extra days holiday if you work bank holidays but this has never been actioned This company has a really high staff turnover Was lied to in the interview - wasn’t told about having a threshold every month and you only make commission on net not gross amount

1.0
Jan 13, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

commission was good if you could make the threshold every month

Cons

capped commission which you had to make an amount of sales before getting this money and also taking into account cancellations and fees. toxic workplace; to give you an overview of what I went through, I had to start 15 minutes before my start time every day unpaid. If I didn't make it in for the 15 minute meeting everyday before starting my shift, my manager would ask why I was late and would make it clear that "you won't be late again" considering my shift hadn't started yet this was ridiculous. If I was late before my start time or even wanted to take a break the managers wouldn't treat you the same, it felt as though I was not wanted most days. Some days the managers would ask if I had been productive with my day, after taking leads, doing plan checks, checking kitchen bays, making quick sales, they have an expectation of 7 leads per a 5 day working week which sometimes is impossible with 13 designers all speaking to the same customers coming through the doors and also 2 other information advisors who are hired to take leads and book the customers in with designers for the coming weeks. You have a score to keep track of and if you don't book your own leads this can lead to a warning, even thought I did take leads I still received a warning from my manager that 3 a week was not good enough. Some days it will just be your luck if a customer wants to book in but it is hard going to compete with the other designers. Another point I want to make out to you, you are entitled to an unpaid lunch hour, which you will never be able to take as the manager wants you to ask permission to "take a bite to eat" don't ask to go on "lunch" or the manager will tell you nobody goes on lunch here, it does not exist you are to take a quick bite to eat. I would ask for a bite and she would tell me a designer was already on lunch and then another and another. Usually when I was hungry I would make a tea and grab biscuits they have in the canteen for our customers to stop my hunger. I used to work 9am till 8pm with a half hour break, when 20+ designers all want to go you need to be quick as they can all get stressed and moody. At the end of everyday we were made to type out an end of day report, this was to show the managers that we were all doing our job effectively. I used to make 30+ calls, designs, catch up with emails, do my learning modules and still got questioned on my end of day reports, some mornings I would come in to emails saying you could be more productive, take more leads, undermining my ability for the role, it was awful I felt although I couldn't do anything right. A lot of the designers felt the same and were drained with the management and the way the store was run. You are made to work a weekly basis of 5/7 days but in the busy period you will be made to work 6/7 days with 10/12 hour shifts per day. The web leads would go to the favourites in the showroom, such as close friends, family members or senior designers. If you asked for help on getting leads (walk in customers) I was told to watch modules on how to do this. I watched other designers who were working there hardest to get leads and sometime they would be knocked back. After your KPI score is reasonable more web leads will drop in, but don't think for a second they will stay with you, they management can swap and change your leads and give them to anyone else. If a design appointment took 4/5 hours and you go for a basket check from your management just to make sure you have everything correct, they will point out everything incorrect and change it for you but if it does not sell and the customers don't wish to pay the deposit the management will treat you differently and say to you "you should have pushed it why did you not try harder" this is a way of pushing you but not an effective way to make us try harder than we had? I always felt although I couldn't go back to my manager after a design appointment that did not sell as they would act disgusted but there was nothing else I could have done? Now being out of Wrens I feel a lot happier, I don't feel as stressed and can walk confidently again as I had lost this within my job with them.

Viewing 205 - 207 of 2,549 Reviews

Glassdoor has 2,609 Wren Kitchens reviews submitted anonymously by Wren Kitchens employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Wren Kitchens is right for you.