Engineer - Engineer Atkins Employee Review

There is very little variety of projects on offer within the Aerospace market, largely owing to the slump in the industry overall. As a result, tasks are increasingly repetitive and dull, and largely qualify as contracting work as opposed to high value consultancy. Overwhelming stress is placed on submitting correct timesheets and maintaining high productivity. In my experience, should you be struggling with either of these, you will have to answer for yourself to a resource manager, your technical lead and/or project manager. As a consultancy, profits are important, but this should not come at the expense of developing the individual and striving to progress careers. Performance Development Reviews are merely tickbox exercises with meaningless high level objectives that are not personalised nor take into account the ambitions of individuals. Although it is a large company with many disciplines, it can be almost impossible to transfer elsewhere or try a new field- each division is effectively separate from each other. This can mean that you are pigeon-holed into one department from the start. There is an outdated corporate structure in place at the top, which favours redundancies and office closures (both of which occurred during my time at the company). There is a disconnect between senior decision makers and employees, which makes you feel powerless within the company. There is a distinct lack of shared strategy and honest communication with employees, and even more worrying, there are questionable ethics within the company. Its parent company is currently embroiled in ongoing bribery and corruption investigations. There is a lack of gender, racial and disability equality within the division (with the exception of the administration team). The office atmosphere is very formal, and most people are quite reserved.