I have worked at 3 branches in the south east over the time I was at the company so I have a varied experience of what it is like to work for Edmundson. I have been wanting to get out of this company after 3 months of starting.
In short I would avoid working for this company at all costs – having the varied experience I have had with three branches (three different sets of branch managers, colleagues and customers) I can tell you a fair argument for not working here. If you want to hear the reasons why you shouldn’t work for Edmundson read on – I wish someone would have told me what I would be experiencing and I wouldn’t have bothered with them at all.
If, like myself, you have applied for a graduate position the reality of what they promised versus what you experience is two worlds apart. With how Edmundson’s works each branch works independently, this means that the branch managers don’t have an active interest in training or progressing you because they will spend a lot of time training you, for you to move onto another branch and be of no benefit to them. The graduate scheme is a national scheme by the upper management of Edmundson’s that the branch managers have to take on board whether they like it or not – this means that the level of training on a branch level is shocking. The majority of graduates I have gotten to know end up with dropping out and moving onto other companies within 2 years. The conversion rate of graduates going onto become a manager is meniscal because of the problems with training/culture/poor pay/politics etc.
The culture within branches is very bad. Bullying is common place and seen more as banter than bullying and not taken seriously. The bonuses you get paid are annually and are used as a tool of control by managers in order to do things you wouldn’t feel comfortable doing. Ultimately as you are paid such a bad salary considering the long hours you do (mostly 50 hours weekly with 1 in 3 Saturdays) most employees rely on their bonus. The branch managers know this and leverage it against you. Also, irrespective of how hard you work or contribution towards the branch, you won’t get paid a bonus if a customer dissolves owing the company lots of money or if the branch doesn’t do well over the year with its figures.
In regards to salary for graduates the company used two recruitment companies for the south east – Bridgewater and pareto law. Edmundsons ended up paying Bridgewater graduates approx. £20k while paying pareto law graduates around £23k even though they are doing the same job! Even for this amount you will end up working 50+ hours per week with 1 in 2 to 1 in 4 Saturdays (depends on branch how many Saturdays you work). This works out to £7.55 per hour for a demanding and knowledgeable job based on £20k and working 1 in 4 Saturdays – the minimum wage in the UK is £7.83!!
If you are unfortunate enough to end up in the industry you will soon see that the company is up against some stiff competition online which are driving prices down massively. This means that internet websites with very low overheads and very low service and undercutting edmundsons prices – this is massively affecting edmundsons figures which will ultimately end up in staff/salaries or both getting cut in order to meet the competition. As edmundsons offers a very high level of service with more overheads than a internet based company I can see it having trouble in the future as contractors end up getting wiser about using internet for prices as the younger generation of contractors comes through the ranks. This is a highly saturated and competitive industry with lots of competitors fighting for the same customers and same scraps – this means that the profit margin is so low when getting orders because the amount of competition fighting against themselves. The customers know this and a small minority of customers exploit it to the extent of being rude and arrogant towards you as they know their account/orders are so important to any electrical wholesaler because of the competition in the industry.
The main system you work from on your computer system is EPCS-net which is such an old system which takes a long time to pick up and is so useless that it makes your job a lot harder and more frustrating especially when you have a customer desperate for an answer and the system is not working. The system is also prone to freezing and not working on a regular occurrence. It doesn’t allow you to do multiply things in one go (whereas the competitors have a more modern system which is far better).
In summary if you do get a job in Edmundson you will end up spending a lot of time learning new products and the technical side of them to work a demanding knowledgeable job for very low money with poor training in a unpleasant culture in an industry that is too saturated. I would avoid at all costs.
