specialist

software engineer

assistant manager

executive assistant

branch manager

Reece Group

I have learnt a lot about plumbing in my time here at Reece. Unfortunately, this is about where the learning ends. The terrible work-life balance, minimal pay, and poor staff morale are only the beginning of this company's issues. 

This company is driven to "create customers for life", however, this should be rephrased to "create a steady income stream" as this company's only priority is to increase its profit margin at all costs. Sadly, this often comes at the price of staff morale. Increasing prices only loses plumbers' business and squeezing suppliers only gets you so far. This company makes its money by cutting corners internally which makes the jobs of its staff longer and harder i.e. lack of adequate training, unqualified management, and reduced staff benefits. 

This is worsened by the fact that Reece testify to a people-focused brand to potential employees but this, in its current state, could not be further from the truth. In my time here, I have spoken to many long-tenured staff members from all over the company and country that all tend to say the same thing - "Reece used to care about its staff". Reece is clinging to the people-focused culture that the company was built on but no longer exists. 

Experienced staff that exemplify the people-focused culture are leaving increasingly fast. This only magnifies the problem as these empty, mostly management, positions are being filled by inexperienced staff who are unqualified and demonstrate the wrong values, due to lack of options. 

The epitome of this problem is the senior executives boast record profits year after year but blooded staff that have been tenured for longer and epitomise Reece's values cannot get so much as a pat on the back, let alone a pay rise. This company enjoys its position under the retail award rate; however, the job entails forklift driving,  heavy multi-person lifting, ute and truck operation, dangerous goods such as corrosives and sharp objects, and other tasks closer to warehousing than a conveyor belt. Bet you didn't see any of that in the job description. 

If that's not enough to convince you to stay away, I would like you to envision the first store that comes to your mind when you hear the word 'retail'. Now imagine what it would be like to be abused by the worst customer possible at that store. Without knowing your choice, I guarantee you it does not compare to the abuse of an angry tradesperson who isn't buying shoes or a watch or a computer, but materials that they need to ensure they are paid and can put food on their family's table. If the higher-ups in this company could envision this scenario, I'm sure they would agree that Reece is not just 'retail'. For now, they're going to continue to pay you like it is.

The day I can leave this company will be a joyous one. I have tried and failed to solve these problems from the inside. If you are someone who thinks you can fix this company, by all means, apply. Otherwise, run for the hills. 

I work in the Reece Support Centre as a software engineer / tech lead, working on digital products that enable our trade account customers to work more efficiently.
Tech lead role includes some "people management" responsibilities, but I also continue to write code and work on feature delivery. I am not pressured to perform or work harder, and when I have chosen to work late on my own terms, my manager has checked on how I'm feeling and encouraged me to take a break if I need to.
There are no strict "office hours" for my role. Ability to start late, finish late, catch up hours at other times. True meaning of flexible work arrangements. I currently work from home 4 days per week despite the office being open. I know of two brothers who are developers in another team, who were stranded in Pakistan as COVID-19 struck. They have continued to work in their normal roles, from Pakistan, since early 2020.
Pay is good for my role and experience level, I would say it's at the good end of market range.
Wide variety of people in all roles, good mix of cultures and everyone is friendly. Collaborative attitude all around.
No micro-management.
Product Owner and Development Manager are not at odds with each other, work together with the team to come up with quarterly objectives and . Team has ownership of its sprint goals. Tech debt is allocated 20% of sprint time.
Commonplace to have secondments into different areas of the business. Encouraged to spend some time working at a branch as counter staff to learn about customers, products and business.
Developers also have lots of opportunities to be promoted as teams grow or new teams are established.
Developers frequently seconded from delivery engineering to product development teams, and vice-versa.
Developers acknowledged for being "T-shaped"- good to have some breadth, but also good to have an area of expertise. Be open to working on any part of an application (backend services, frontend, infrastructure...).
Hardest part of the job is tech leads and principal engineers typically have an on-call roster for out of hours issues.

The pay is slightly above average, they really focus on being a team and creating a certain type of culture. They are a little too PC to acknowledge the toxi - city from *some* long term, employees who have a lot of time on their hands to gate keep and gas light the newer employees with their negat-ivity and they certainly don't get rid of these people. It's a little like working in the public sector , these people complain about everyone else while trying to do the bare minimum themselves. With all that said, there are a lot of great opportunities to get your forklift and truck licence and other workplace training, Don't do the certificate 3 in warehousing if you want to study something else in the future, it will affect your ability receive free Cert 3 tafe in other subjects that you may prefer to study. There are great career prospects for management and working across all the specialty branches with Irrigation, Civil, HVAc and now FIRE. Get to meet some good people and build relationships with customers and tradies, always handy networks to maintain.

A variety of tasks involved in each day's work, from serving customers to maintaining the warehouse. 

Customer service skills and an expertise in plumbing supplies have developed. Time management has definitely excelled in this role with the management of branch deliveries.

The management are friendly and easy to get on with, can go to them with confidence in supporting personal issues as well as professional.

All employees at this workplace are friendly and very easy to get along with. They all help each other out if any issues or challenges that are too demanding occur.

The work is tedious and boring, can feel intimidated a lot by the trade customers. Feel like all energy has been sucked out at the end of a working week.
The days drag out so long making you not want to return the following day. 

The enjoyable part of this workplace is being able to utilise the technology to achieve sales and working alongside a great team.

I loved my time at Reece Plumbing; I learned so many things about the plumbing industry that I never thought were real. Management, rules and regulations and standard protocols were so effective that I worked safely and efficiently. All the people that I worked with were friendly, made me feel part of a team and taught me so much from how they work to how to create a good work ethic by having confidence and good communication skills. The most enjoyable part of the job was receipting and receiving inward goods, inputting the items into the system, learning the name and functions of the products and having my co-workers teach and help me understand how to do so I would eventually do the jobs with my eyes closed. I also enjoyed working the counter, greeting and serving the customers face-to-face and arranging orders and deliveries.

Working at Reece was fun, enjoyable and rewarding, it used to be very busy but very educative and keeps you on your toes. The management was very friendly and are always ready to listen and help you and guide you the same goes with the colleagues. The place was fantastic very good work place. 

At Reece I acquired knowledge and experience across various IT departments, the most enjoyable part of the job was the job itself and the most hardest part of the job was quitting the job at Reece. 

My overall experience at Reece was phenomenal and most importantly I had the job satisfaction and felt good about working for such a big and wonderful organisation.

This can be very dependant on each individual branch and its manager. But the overall feeling of the company is lack of thought in regards to staff work/life balance or wellbeing. This shows in the constant chopping and changing of expectations, duties, start/finish times, missed lunch and rest breaks, and the expectation of unpaid overtime. 
From day one career progression will be dangled in front of you but unless you give your life to the company for slightly over minimum wage, this is unrealistic.


Managers play favorites. You're either accepted or excluded for how you fit in. Compassion and empathy from management is rare. Missing your lunch and breaks happens frequently. Working a full day 6am - 5:30pm is expected (at a branch level) especially if it's a busy branch. There's not a lot of specialised training nor time allocated to attend any training that could help with your role. Pay Level is extremely poor with bonus structures that look appealing however in reality are not achievable. Prepare to be moved around the country to prove your "loyalty and commitment" to the Reece Brand.

good parts of the job : 4 weeks annual leave per year, sick days, job security, physical work is quite easy, lots of driving and seeing new places, management are quite flexible with days off.

bad parts: management are not very good at keeping personal conversations with them to themselves, staff talk about employees/customers/suppliers behind their backs but are nice to their face. there is a lot of unnecessary bull that comes with the job while it usually is quite trivial it can still result in you having a bad day, not much comradery as employees are quick to finger point if you've done something wrong which results in little trust between co-workers

you can expect about $1600-1700 after tax per fortnight as a driver

Is like McDonalds for adults. Long hours for paltry pay, no flexibility. The carrot is dangled in front of you for the bi-annual bonus which is also very little and subject to you not questioning anything ever, no matter how unfair. High staff turnover due to this. They encourage young UNI graduates with degrees or sometimes double degrees and still pay them next to nothing. A lot to learn, lots of very strenuous lifting, whilst they say all the WHS things but passively aggressively expect you to lift two person objects alone. Seriously, you earn more packing shelves and it's no stress and have a better work life balance. Stay away.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Specialist 3 salaries reported	$94,900 per year
Software engineer 7 salaries reported	$109,286 per year
Assistant manager 3 salaries reported	$78,000 per year
Executive assistant 5 salaries reported	$121,000 per year
Branch manager 4 salaries reported	$83,125 per year

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