Arizona Department of Water Resources Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Arizona Department of Water Resources full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – A good place to work. Professional staff, promotion opportunities, good management. Plenty of opportunities to expand skills and learn new things. Customers are great to work with.

Cons – Budget cuts reduced the staff to a skeleton crew and closed outlying offices. I would still be working there if not for the cuts.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep doing what you are doing. Consider hiring back staff as the budget allows. Keep in touch with what the lower level staff is doing. Offer more training opportunities.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Arizona Department of Water Resources full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – The department provides a flexible work schedule, numerous paid holidays, and an opportunity to save money through a deferred compensation plan.

Cons – ADWR is a failed organization that has abandoned the goals of the Arizona Groundwater Management Act, and has failed after 30 years to make any progress on the statewide surface water adjudication. Almost all of the scientific and engineering professionals left the agency years ago, and the remaining staff has little technical expertise. Senior management cannot comprehend complex scientific analysis, and marginalizes employees with actual expertise in the field. The agency has virtually no respect within the water community due to its simplistic and ineffective approaches to water management issues.

Advice to Senior Management – Reconstitute the department as a technical agency. Replace the current management with a professional engineering staff headed by a state engineer. Eliminate most of the water resources specialist positions and contract this work out to the private sector.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Arizona Department of Water Resources

Pros – Good benefits
Great co-workers
Work can be rewarding
Most of the staff is knowledgeable and willing to help others
Opportunity to learn a lot about the state's water resources if interested

Cons – Employee moral is extremely low after massive layoffs
Low pay and no chance of increases unless you promote
Pay is not equitable between employees
Difficult to complete assignments due to high workload and little support
Lack of direction and vision

Advice to Senior Management – Develop a vision and goals for the agency and share this with staff. Keep staff informed about agency activities and provide more opportunities for training and professional development. Offer employees incentives and rewards for high performance and acknowledge the hard work and dedication of each Division without bias.

Former Employee – worked at Arizona Department of Water Resources

Pros – Support from other employees
Great work conditions

Cons – Work location
Lay offs
Building DWR is located in

Advice to Senior Management – Hang in there

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Arizona Department of Water Resources

Pros – Easy to balance work and personal life
Most of the people are friendly and fun to work with
Many very knowledgeable people who are willing to teach others

Cons – Lately employees have been kept in the dark about budget issues and lower level employees don't know what will happen or if they will have a job tomorrow.
Several typical government employees who are there just to get a paycheck and management does nothing to discourage this attitude.
Pay scale for positions makes it nearly impossible to find or retain good employees

Advice to Senior Management – The "us" and "them" attitude has to end. Departments don't work together and some departments openly don't like other departments. I think we should all be in this together and not count different sections as the enemy. All sections (and section managers) need to respect other sections (and section managers).

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Arizona Department of Water Resources

Pros – Work schedule is good, company allows telecommuting one day a week, benefits are not too bad, opportunity to learn different types of tasks if you have the drive to learn them.

Cons – Lots of infighting between different divisions within the agency. Communication between senior management and the rest of the agency is poor. Let people know that there would be layoffs, but did not tell anyone who was going to be laid off (or even which divisions would be hit the hardest) until the day that layoffs occurred. No training program to ensure that the skill level of all employees is adequate.

Advice to Senior Management – Divisions need to work with each other better and not try to silence certain people's views. Better communication of what the priorities for the Department are.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Arizona Department of Water Resources

Pros – Good coworkers with a can do attitude. ADWR offers room to constantly learn and improve professionally. Work environment is relax and stress free.

Cons – Too many senior employees that are there just waiting for retirement. These employees lack commitment and drive to learn ans improve professionally.

Advice to Senior Management – Take advantage of current budget deficit and 'reload' department. There are many great employees (actually the majority) but as always there are some individuals that don't contribute much.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend