Pros
Working hours and work-life balance is ok. Met some very intelligent and knowledgeable people here who you can learn from, especially if you are young with lack of experience. Some projects are high profiled and exciting to work on. Atkins is a good name to have on CV
Cons
Atkins is a company that is definitely going downhill and will be very interesting to see where they are in the next 5 years. I worked here for 1.5 years. In that time i saw well over 30 people within my department leave. This makes it a difficult place to develop if you are young due to your managers/colleagues who you work with on a daily basis always changing. I noticed that it was usually the most knowledgeable employees that kept leaving and Atkins were happy to let them leave. In terms of development, there is no structure in place for graduates to get qualified i.e. working towards RICS chartership. This was hugely frustrating as i was told I will receive the support to do my APC. I spent months speaking to different people trying to get on a programme only to be told that there is nothing in place and they are 'working towards something'. Projects are a complete mess and not managed properly especially in Rail (doesn't help with the huge turnover in staff). Atkins are a company that have a lot of policies in place for the sake of having it and do not follow them. I was due an annual review on my progress and salary and after exceeding all my targets I was told that I should not expect a salary review for a while. There was no recognition for meeting my targets and my line manager did not bother setting objectives for the following year. This was the case with many people on a similar level to me. Graduates and assistants are just seen as people to go to to get the dirty work done, not an asset of the company who should be developed. If you are from an ethnic minority group, I would not recommend Atkins. I was subject to bullying and discrimination by people at higher levels especially my line manager (I had a new line manager due to my original line manager leaving the company). I also noticed that south-east asian employees would get worked harder than others and were looked down upon. HR is also a joke. When i reported twice of being harassed and bullied, I was ignored. When i chased them up again, they said to speak to my my seniors. My seniors told me to ignore what is happening and that this is just the way it is. Absolutely disgusting. The people on director levels are all friends and take recognition for your hard work. It would be very difficult to progress within the company. It is not the best place to go to for development despite Atkins being a 'big' firm. I gave it time and eventually decided to leave... which was the best decision I've ever made. The fact that so many people come into the company and leave after a short time (through all different levels), indicates that there is something wrong internally. I don't see it getting better and is not somewhere you want to get stuck in while all this is happening.
