The company does not always ‘walk the talk’ when it comes to Mental Health and Wellness. Specifically, it allows its staff to be bullied by a couple of our less enlightened Clients, in order to keep their business, although the health costs to the individuals due to stress could be tremendous (time off for stress, smoking, weight gain etc.).
Seems very US-centric, and even our UK-based management seem in thrall to that. While it’s great that Steve Demetriou rings the closing bell at the NYSE, how does that really raise our profile – and translate to increased project work - in the UK?
The company boasts that the number of employees has increased from an anticipated 74,000 to 77,000 since the acquisition of CH2M , but there are lay-offs happening quietly in the background. Billability and future workload are the key things: the company is ruthlessly (or pragmatically) hire-and-fire. There is evidence of a silo mentality when it comes to resourcing and deployment of staff to maximise their workload and billability, perhaps restricting those opportunities mentioned as a ‘Pro’.
The company appears to have a problem with diversity, particularly gender diversity; this has been exacerbated by the non-transparent way in which management appointments were made as part of the CH2M acquisition. It leaves the company quite rightly open to suggestions that unconscious bias would have had a large part to play in making those leadership appointments. It did not do as well as its competitors in the Gender Pay Gap Reporting earlier this year, something that has several times been ascribed to large bonuses in the male dominated senior levels 'skewing the numbers’. Apart from the fact that this response would suggest that the company is not taking the issue as seriously as it should, it does not alter the fact that it does not seem to employ many women, particularly at mid- to higher responsibility levels. When some of your preferred Clients are allowed to be bullies because it’s good business, and are left unchallenged when their requirement for a resource is that ‘He’ should have certain skills and experience, then it can feel like the company has a mountain to climb. One unfortunate side-effect of regular, quiet lay-offs, even if – or especially if - picked impersonally by a computer, is that they can potentially result in a disproportionate impact: the loss of just one member of an already under-represented group can result in the loss of a significant percentage of that group.
