Blue Diamond Reviews

4.3

83% would recommend to a friend

(238 total reviews)

Alan Roper

89% approve of CEO

81% positive business outlook

Blue Diamond has an employee rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars, based on 238 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Blue Diamond employee rating is 22% above average for employers within the Retail and wholesale industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

238 reviews
1.0
2 Apr 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Garden centre teams are great, work hard and are committed to do a good job.

Cons

Head office offers little or no support or direction to the centres. The MD rules the roost surrounded by his team of yes men (woman) and sycophants. Although experienced in their own fields they generally appear to have no outside commercial experience and therefore are not forward thinking or open to new ideas or ways of working. There’s a distinct lack of strategy and leaves the people on the ‘front line’ being ignored and left to do what they’ve always done.

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Blue Diamond Response
7y
One can only imagine this (anonymous) review is from one of 4 recently exited Centre Managers from last year’s acquisitions. There is a distinct culture difference between corporate and entrepreneurial companies. Blue Diamond is the latter. Some people feel liberated and energised from moving to an entrepreneurial culture as opposed to a corporate one, others feel challenged, threatened and ultimately freeze. The new measurable responsibility and clear focused retail direction delivering high standards scare them. These automatons have failed to adapt to an energised passionate culture and had found themselves wanting due to their reliance on weekly Head Office edicts, which we refrain from. One has only to look at our investor relations page on our website to see the successful sustained profitable growth of this company which is due to our entrepreneurial approach outlined above. This approach has successfully grown the company from £7.5m to £170m during my 20-year tenure delivering sustainable profits which have been used to finance future growth. (no PE money.) It would appear that this anonymous person chose to interpret the culture differently. They were blind to its success and strengths and they were essentially a fish out of water that could not operate within a new retail detail focussed environment. Had this person been honourable and supplied their name I would not have chosen to respond to this feedback as people reading the review could have looked up the reviewer’s track/employment record and judged his comments in that context. I will finish by saying if you are reading reviews about our company because you enjoy retailing and are looking to join a forward thinking, out of the box, successful dynamic company that empowers, rewards and recognises employees, please contact us.
1.0
10 Jan 2019

A very poor experience

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Fantastic staff knowledge, great locations and the company is ambitious in nature

Cons

The company infrastructure is shambolic - there is no communicable strategy, no commercial leadership, no learning and development department and little joined up thinking. The company make money more out of luck than judgement most of the time and new ideas are rarely entertained. The majority of the general management teams across the centres appear to privately be at odds with the way the company is run but will not act on it, especially whilst the business units are making money. Many of the head office senior management team are specialists in their knowledge areas but their ability to manage people is appalling and urgently needs to be addressed. I would not recommend this as a good company to work for at all.

2.0
19 Mar 2021

Awful Management

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- there was a nice working environment

Cons

- poor and irregular pay - understaffed - horrible managment that expected you to know everything right away - zero training, thrown in at the deep end - long hours - regularly did 8 hour days with no break because they were so understaffed

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Blue Diamond Response
5y
At Blue Diamond we pride ourselves on looking after both our customers and valued employees. We were disappointed to read your feedback and would like to better understand your frustrations regarding your employment with us, this will help us improve how we care for our colleagues going forward. Please contact me directly at ben.groves@bluediamond.gg, and we can discuss your feedback further.
Viewing 1 - 3 of 238 Reviews

Glassdoor has 250 Blue Diamond reviews submitted anonymously by Blue Diamond employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Blue Diamond is right for you.