Sinking ship, revolving door, awful pay, poor training, dull work, uninspiring - Anonymous employee Buro Happold Employee Review

A company that could be way better than it is if only it remunerated staff competitively and created incentive. The talent of this workforce is severely undervalued and there has been a huge exodus with staff constantly leaving. The only people that stay are those not interested in money or who have served in industry for decades. Wage rises are below inflation, bonuses are never paid to anyone below associate grade unless you've completed several weeks worth (yes, weeks) of unpaid overtime to prove that you are "dedicated". To graduates thinking of joining: The new start induction is so poor and sets the tone for the remainder of your time here. Glorified CAD dummy with no real technical work. Tweaking drawings without fundamental understanding being given prior to undertaking a task just to get deliverables out the door. Don't take this job for the money, there are good opportunities to learn on "prestigious" projects (they are local education sectors slavedrivers) for a year or two on your CV and then leave. The lack of any sort of reward for effective work creates an atmosphere of mediocrity and stagnation where nobody is praised or more importantly, punished for mistakes which trickle downstream and affect everyone else in the form of project budgets and workload. A lot of internal office politics, embarrassing levels of delusion when talking about being "connected" to the wider company/regions. Office leads *think* they're in touch with the other staff when they speak on their half but don't have a clue and don't want to listen to anything perceivable negative one might have to say in order to facilitate an improvement. Nor are any suggestions to improve current systems taken on board. They continually try to channel Ted Happold but I'm pretty sure Ted Happold would have addressed the fact 57% of staff thought they were not paid fairly (staff survey) rather than brushing it over in a feedback video. The lack of any base level of corporate or formal structure means that project management is overwhelmed (because there is none). There are no procedures, routines or rules which means technical information has no standard format and this causes so many issues on projects. Having addressed all of this throughout my time to no avail, it's no wonder I left. If you have ambition, stay away from this company.