Extremely poor management, large volume of "people" managers in jobs that require technical expertise. A fundamental lack of understanding and lack of proactivity to try to understand has created a pass the buck culture where glaring issues are ignored and sloppy workarounds are used. Management will happily throw money at 3rd party experts who know less than internal employees and who end up taking the company on a ride for many months whilst contributing nothing.
New functionality/goals are driven by the city and shareholders who have zero understanding of the impact to existing projects. Unrealistic timelines mean nothing is ever fully completed or done to a high standard. This isn't an issue if people accept poor quality but the shareholders want things to be great quality and also done now. Case and point B&Q's website, so much potential but such a bad customer experience as time is never given and lessons learned are always ignored.
Yearly surveys that are ignored. Colleagues are asked yearly to rate all areas of the business, every year the same feedback is given and the same "we will look at how we can resolve this" line is communicated but nothing has ever been done (in 5 years) to change anything. This ties into the next point as there is a group of managers/directors that shield each other from bad feedback ever being escalated.
Cronyism - management jobs and senior positions are given to friends/mates of management, not the best candidates available. This is an accepted fact across multiple areas of the business that has lead to apathy in the hardworkers who eventually leave the business and take their knowledge with them. Talent retention is a massive issue for Kingfisher which they're fully aware of but do little to resolve. People smart enough to point out flaws can be labelled as troublemakers rather than listened to (the same people who do a majority of work and are emotionally invested being labelled troublemakers is a very quick way to lose them)
