Saddest place I ever worked - Anonymous employee National Grid Employee Review

1.0
May 31, 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Not too much back stabbing and such. Generally speaking employees are nice, but have a very blue collar feel and mentality about them.

Cons

No money to spend on badly needed infrastructure, including IT. Ancient systems (40+ years old) and no money to upgrade or improve them. Mentality & focus of the employees, esp mgmt, is not aligned with making everyday working conditions better, but rather to deliver a consistent ROE to shareholders - at the cost of thousands of employees' ability to do their job everyday. They spend inordinate amounts of money on "Safety" related ad campaigns and such, but IT systems which are decrepit, require workarounds everyday, etc...no money to replace or properly repair them. They did such an outstandingly poor job in outsourcing IT work, their employees despise IT and just find ways to work around every IT situation they are presented with. No growth opportunities. People have done the same job here for 20, 30, 40 years...and their ability to embrace change is reflected in that fact. The avg employee age across Grade Bands for the various jobs is over 50 yrs old. They struggle to get any decent young employees who have fresh ideas or vision.

Explore other reviews about National Grid

1.0
Jun 30, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

At NGED the few pros are lessened by the day as the cons are increasing. The idea of a career has gone and now most are resigned to just having a job.

Cons

Aside from the reality being very different from what the leadership team sell IE they don't care about people or net zero, it's all spin and marketing. Now at NGED we are in a situation where staff you have known for many years simply disappear from duty and no one seems to know why, a couple of weeks later they have left the business with an NDA. It's happening all over the business. There seems to be a drive to remove any leaders who have industry technical knowledge and replace them with people from outside the industry who knows little to nothing about electricity. Despite safe to say being an important value, speaking out against this usually results in an NDA. It's toxic positivity where playing along seems to be more important than the role you fulfil.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All