store manager

assistant store manager

sales assistant

driver assistant

manager

Dulux-Decorator-Centre

A typical day at work would consist of serving customers from both trade and retail backgrounds. Whilst customers would arrive in-store during opening hours, we would also receive orders for collection and delivery via online, by phone and sometimes fax. 3 out of the 5 week days you will receive your main delivery directly from Dulux, and when not busy with assisting customers, you account for the products and distribute them across the shop floor and warehouse. You will also receive deliveries from 3rd party suppliers almost every day. Rather than doing stock counts at the end of the month of quarter, you do weekly stock counts throughout the quarter, so you fit them in as and when you can and this system works quite well.

I learned quite a lot about decorating and decorating products. There's a lot of learning modules online to complete during your first 6 months, and then refresher modules with updated products every year. There are also Dulux Academy courses you can attend, most of which are based in Slough. The company will pay for car hire, train tickets of even flight tickets for you to attend these courses. I also fine tuned my customer service skills, a key being able to understand the customers needs to be able to help them the most, and the product knowledge from these modules helps with this.

The management are very supportive and approachable, and genuinely want you to succeed and grow. When I first started I never even considered a management position, but with experience and encouragement I succeeded in that. HR are very helpful and respond quickly to any enquiries.

Workplace culture is welcoming and nurturing. Employees are friendly and helpful, especially when you just start. Everyone is part of the team, and all play a vital role for success.

The hardest part of the job for me would be time management. Dulux would introduce new roles and tasks for stores to carry out but wouldn't necessarily account for how they would be completed with the same amount of hours and team members.

The most enjoyable part of the job would be engaging with customers. Unlike other retail or even trade environments, you build up relationships with your decorators and other customers. You get to know them over time, what products they use and what projects they are working on. But you also get to know them on a more personal level, and this makes working at Dulux a great experience in my opinion.

Dulux is a great place to work because of the people. Mainly your customers, they really are what makes the day to day work great. 
From DIY’ers to sole traders to huge contractors they’re an absolute pleasure to be around. When things go right. 
The company has recently went through a huge restructuring although this does seem for the best. It’s now so much easier to have conversations with customers and be able to action what they want, when they want. As long as you can build up a good business case. 
IT is still an absolute nightmare and manpower is extremely tight. You do have the very minimum amount of staff in store and it can often mean overworking. Although, I have always gotten the time back. 
It’s the company I’ve worked for where when the store closes at 5pm you go at 5pm. No evening work. No Sunday working. Saturday’s can be a pain, but they usually bring in a decent amount of money. 
I’ve never had anyone breathing down my neck to get things done. As long as you can prove you’re doing everything you can, they usually understand. 
It’s pretty much like running your own business. If you work here you can work pretty much anywhere.

The product training you receive is on going, there is only so much you can learn about paint at once so just take your time. 
You can deal with situations such as someones missing paint order, at the end of the day, if the customer doesn't get their paint, they can't do their job, they don't get paid, so there isn't any room for cutting corners.
overall you cannot work there if you want an easy job to roll in to each day, every member of staff matters, you really need to be a team player.
I cannot fault the business for their persistence with your training, you can learn many different skills from stock control, purchasing, customer service and as much as you can take about paint.
Majority of the employees there are fun to work with and as long as you sing about your successes you get praised for it.

Finally, you only get out what you put in, and if you go in dragging your feet wishing you stayed at home, this isn't the job for you.

I worked for DDC (nee Mcdonald Rose) for over 13 years in 3 busy London stores as a store and multi site manager. I left 5 years ago, the grass is always greener on the other side, (possibly the worst move I have ever made.  I really enjoyed the cut and thrust of business,  the wages were good, the bonuses were sometimes difficult to achieve but worth it when you did. My only real gripes were an Area Manager (who was my Area Manager at different times) that I didn't get on with ( I was not alone) for my entire 13 year, he has since resigned, at times I felt like it was not about doing the job and selling the product, it was more about filling in forms to say that forms have been filled in. Ongoing training and personal development courses were always on hand, overall if they would have me I would be back in a heartbeat.

Dulux really have lost their way, all of the admin takes priority over the customers and the work life balance. Senior management haven't got a clue what is required operationally to run a store, they seriously cannot get their heads out of excel sheets for five minutes to wake up and smell the coffee. The day to day systems are that process heavy that you literally can spend all day doing admin without seeing a customer. When you do get to see a customer the system not only takes ages top boot up, but also has that many issues that you have to overcome a two minute transaction can be stretched out to half an hour easily. 
On a plus note the staff that I worked with were great and the crack with the customers.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Pleasant staff, but did not like blue tooth monitors in van , restrictive and irritating after a while.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The monitoring in van . Entering motorway requires acceleration and this often set it on red mode . Concentration reduced aswell as confidence.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Excellent . The role required longer distance driving which I also prefer .

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Loading van in order of delivery. Customer service issues for building sites delivered to which had no road sighns or house numbers yet , so good communication with workmen on sites was required and this contact information was readily available.

Very high staff turn over every year gives you fair idea of this place. Some years almost all staff left. Unfair, uncaring and incompetent management make working life difficult and stressful unnecessarily. Pay is few pennies above min wage. They will tell you how big and great they are but reality for employees is totally different. You just a number there really. They always struggle to recruit despite being the biggest brand and paint company. 

You will meet amazing people here. The job is different every single day. 7-4 shift pattern or 8-5 shift patter mon-fri. You'll need to work most Saturdays and claim back time in lieu.

Job is easy enough most days, however you'll be piled up with new things every single week which you'll need to adhere to. So you'll need to do your main job (sell paint) plus carry out 101 other things like credit checks/banking/ special orders/stock checks/cleaning/ training/ complaints/ enquiries.

Other than a mass work overload the job is amazing. You want and must get into a managers role as soon as possible.

A day at work is good depending on who your line manager is I learnt a lot about the paint trade but sadly self taught as training is very poor and there is little to no support. Management are a joke they act like a little boys club that don't think twice about passing the buck to save there own skin and if you outshine or are better at your job they won't think twice about pushing you out the door. There is a lot of good staff members that work for dulux made a few good friends while working there.

Dulux is stuck in the past. They haven’t really adapted to the competitive market they place themselves in. The reason for this is complacency and the fact they already have a solid market share. They run their shops on the minimal staff, the store managers job isn’t just store manager, it’s three jobs in one. Overall accountability for the shop, B2B sales and account manager. Limited progression, due to vast difference in salary between store and regional roles  

The pay

Staff turnover is high due to the unpaid nature of the role and better opportunities available. I am looking for a new job as we speak

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Store manager 3 salaries reported	£32,000 per year
Assistant store manager 7 salaries reported	£26,843 per year
Sales assistant 2 salaries reported	£20,802 per year
Driver assistant 2 salaries reported	£20,802 per year
Manager 1 salary reported	£26,000 per year

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