It is clear that the partners simply don't know the basics of how to manage people.
- Office politics is horrendous at Buro Happold. The partners work closely with senior staff who cause problems but ignore those who try to fix or work past the problems. It's best to stay quiet around anyone who has been there for more than 5 years, particularly if you are not from the UK. Turnover is high among American employees and some senior staff has been replaced by people who are from the UK. There is definitely a British bias in the US offices.
- Communication is a real problem. Organizational changes often occur without letting affected employees know. Some managers never meet with their direct hires and provide little or no guidance on job performance. Expectations and guidance on projects are rarely provided and asking for it can be tricky.
- Career advancement is inhibited by a lack of cooperation between regional offices.
- They have had problems with quality control which consistently pushes projects way beyond budget and it's beginning to hurt their reputation as well as their business. They deal with it by being very heavy-handed with inexperienced engineers instead of bringing in senior engineers and working with them to identify and fix specific problems. Again, bad communication.
- An employee's annual review is typically conducted by 2 managers together. Sometimes they will focus on a single instance that they will claim was a serious problem (it wasn't) but never said anything about at the time, so you are caught completely off guard during the review. That "problem" is used to reduce your scores in all review categories and eliminate any bonus, performance raise or advancement for the year. This exact tactic was used on 4 different people that I know of last year. 3 of them have since left.
- They have had sexual harassment issues over the past few years. Their sex harassment training was little more than an outside lawyer going through a list of "don't"s and had little effect.
- They have considerable trouble hanging on to HR staff. At least 2 HR managers left because the partners were uncooperative.
- Their record keeping is a joke. Simple things like tracking vacation time became impossible this year. Also, their system was set up a couple years ago so that no one, including managers, could read or retrieve performance reviews once they were submitted.
