CH2M HILL Reviews in Denver, CO Area

Pros

Very flexible work schedule, environmentally conscience, great offices

Cons

Pay compensation discrepancies between divisions, Position levels seem based on time experience only

Pros

Supportive, friendly, professional, ETHICAL culture
Good benefits
Great facility
Strong, ethical leadership
Clear, established processes/systems
Diversity - walks the talk

Cons

Can be somewhat bureaucratic at times
Recent efforts to reduce overhead may have cut too deeply into essential services

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the great work - including keeping employees up date on enterprise developments and activities.

Pros

Employee owned and good 401(k) match, but I'm sure they will be reducing the match soon.

Cons

Matrixed organization stifles communication. Upper management has no clue about what is going on in the trenches.

Advice to Senior Management

Reorganize regionally.

Pros

Fairly good perks at the corporate office; but similar treatment is not found at sites or other locations.

Cons

Lack of clear vision/focus by new leadership team. Training has been pretty much eliminated and managers don't know how to do basic skills related to employee and performance management.

Advice to Senior Management

Do a thorough review and employee driven focus group and be honest when you get the feedback. Life is not good here and you are losing talent that could have been kept if their managers had the skills and education needed for their position.

Pros

Opportunities abound
Great work / life balance
Travel to interesting places
Many great people

Cons

Company does not remove toxic colleagues and managers.
Highly political
Pay wasn't competitive for my area
I observed some very duplicitious behavior in my last year with the firm.
Boys club mentality

Advice to Senior Management

Stop treatingyour overhead employees like a burden on the company. Either support them or outsource. Your shared service folks work incredibly hard. Most of them have seen collagues be laid off and they are taking over more work. I don't know why anyone who has other prospects would stay at CH. I know so many talented people in these area who have left CH who could have been the future senior leaders of the firm. No one seemed even sad when they left.

Pros

Flexibility; ability to work remote; cool projects

Cons

Senior leaders who are driving are in it for the money and have their heads in the sand on important people issues. Since it is primarily a consulting business it is really hard to do it well without good people. Once they are "in" leaders can behave and say anyway they want regardless of how it fails the leadership test.

Advice to Senior Management

Get real about your people issues. Tune into the leading indicators that will give you a real insight into what is coming. Blog and tweet with optimism, but know your employees are not stupid. The facts and truth are discussed even when you are not blogging about it.

Pros

Onsite gym, cafeteria, the concept of work/life balance & flexible schedules.

Cons

Managers from upper levels, down to the lowest level of managers, will not approve flexible schedules in order to actualize work/life balance.

Advice to Senior Management

Want to make a significant impact on reducing overhead? Start by trimming the executive compensation packages. I have a chainsaw that you can borrow....

Pros

Good salary, though raises were not good in the last few year. Good benefits, but once again the last few years has seen a decrease in benefits. Immediate supervisors were good. Flexible with hours and time off.

Cons

The cost cutting at the overhead level has left the company without enough people to perform the critical tasks needed at the core of the company. A lot of employees are constantly wondering if they will be let go next. It seems like the company purposely letting go of there more senior (more highly paid) employees and then replacing them a few months later with less experienced (cheaper) employees.

Advice to Senior Management

The company claims that the employees are the most important part of the company. Start acting like that is the truth. When Ralph Peterson was in charge it really did feel like the company cared about the employees, but no longer.

Pros

Environment is nice, casual for the most part, nice people to work with, balanced work/life for me

Cons

The business group I worked for was in total confusion and suffered from direction. It seemed the always picked the leftovers or outsiders to run the group, people who had no experience running the business type they were now leading.

Advice to Senior Management

When you can't stop the bleeding and people are leaving, maybe it's time to listen to the feedback.

Pros

It is tough to come up with something good to say about this company. One issue that is positive is the manner in which it values it own stock. Since 2004 it has risen from $10 to about over $35.

Cons

The management team acts childish at times and doesn't function as a team.

Overall lack of professional from the top down. There was a time when CH2MHILL was like a large family. The idea of employee owenership was paramount. Over the past 5 years this idea has been replaced with a top down organization where the employees need to work harder to provide for the lavish salaries and benefits for the top management. Outside management has replaced those that built the compnay and they do anything for a profit and to keep te stock price up.

CH makes me sick to watch as employees are lead down a path to acquisition, and don't see it coming.

NEW EMPLOYEES, make sure you suckup to your boss, and don't forget to suck up to his boss as your boss may be gone tomorrow.

Advice to Senior Management

Promote from within. Really listen to low and middle employees. Avoid the cronyism in promotion which is rampant.