City of Calgary Reviews in Calgary, AB Area

Pros

Great Pay. Can work at any City of Calgary pool.

Cons

Hard to get hours. A lot of split shifts.

Pros

Easy and relaxed atmosphere
Employee respect is good
Pay and Benefits package is good
Work is plentiful

Cons

Can be dishonest when it comes to pay
There's a need to record everything you do to cover your @$$
Many managers just coasting to retirement
Little to zero feedback for work done

Advice to Senior Management

Spend more time working with staff
Spend more time actually doing your job

Pros

Compressed work week, flex days, ability to bank stat holidays that fall on the weekend, good place to get experience

Cons

Very bureaucratic. The business units operate as their own areas with no regard to the CIty as a whole. Lots of older senior management that are coasting through to retirement.

Advice to Senior Management

The City needs to operate as a complete organization. Business units constantly squabbling over who will pay for what out of departmental budgets is helping no one. Recruiting fresh talent for managerial roles is required.

Pros

Diversity of job, training and possibility to move into other areas within the organization.

Cons

poor management direction and leadership

Advice to Senior Management

step out and lead

Pros

Way to break in to the labor market after extended mat leave.

Cons

poor training given to deputies on how to be a manager. Promoted from firefighter to deputy without have sufficient skills, training and experience. Very odd promotion process.

Deputies have no experience in dealing with staff other than firefighters; no business experience; and don't realize that not everyone is secretarial. Deputies are unable to adapt their supervisory skills and are drowning in trying to learn their new job.

Results: deputies frequent outbursts of anger directed towards employees as they struggle to cope. This directly contributes to staff quitting or accepting new positions. Others are expected to pick up the slack with little or no compensation.

Advice to Senior Management

rethink how fire fighters are promoted

Pros

Being a firefighter is the best job in the world helping people while haging out with a group of guys its like being on a big hockey team.

Cons

We have a very poor management team that believes that the more people in management the better it will get, this is their only solution to poor moral of the work force, they do not and don't want imput from the work force. As well the city does not negotite with us, many people have gone their whole careers working under contract for only a few months at a time.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your work force, and outsource your ideas to other city fire departments, follow some of their management structuring, too much wasted money on management pions.

Pros

Great employer for someone who is not looking to work very hard, move internally to other positions and don't care how they are treated. Salary is above average for administrative positions. Well designed health and wellness programs. Many flexible work options, including compressed work week and teleworking.

Cons

There is absolutely no focus on career development or progression within most business units, except for probably for one. Violations of the respectful workplace policy are tolerated. Atmosphere is very casual, with many people wearing khakis, sweatpants, t-shirts, etc. Education is of utmost importance and therefore the organization is very credentialized, unless you have a degree it is hard to move up.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay attention to what employees are telling you and what is clearly visible on employee survey responses annually.

Pros

In most areas, the flextime and flexible work options are available and encouraged. I've worked all sorts of schedules as my job has changed--the regular 1 day off in 15 cycle, the 1 day off in 10 cycle, or the 4-day week.

I have worked significant unpaid overtime (e.g., 50+ hours in a week) probably only about 1/10 of the time, and it's usually recognized when you go above and beyond.

Typically, the top 20% of our staff are as good as anyone else I've ever worked with. Some of them are worth 25 - 40% more in the private sector, and sometimes they take those opportunities--but sometimes, they don't!

Cons

The pay is not the best; if you want money, look elsewhere. I used to recruit for one area of the City, and we regularly lost out on salary--asking people to come in for $20K less and more responsibility...really good recruiting tool!

In terms of innovation and new ideas, things are changing demographically--we no longer have most of our staff in the 25+ year bracket; instead, we have a "U" shape, with most of our staff <10 years and >25 years with the City, so that helps innovation, but will likely hurt execution.

The biggest downside is that you can feel like a cog in the machine; my best days were those when I was connected to citizens or doing something that felt like it was directly connected to citizens. My worst--well, I wasn't.

Advice to Senior Management

Three big pieces of advice:

1. You're all dedicated, competent, hard-working people. Show yourselves a bit more. As it is, I only see most of the General Managers or City Manager in passing in the hallways, and have only once seen a former City Manager do a presentation to a cross-section of employees.

2. Make the connection to your Corporate Management Team from the ALT. The CMT and their L5 reports are the ones who make or break your strategies and goals--and it's amusing to see how much they can get twisted along the way.

3. Get clear about our goals. "Deliver quality public service" isn't a goal. It's a pablum statement. A goal needs to inspire and elevate us, and encourage us to ask questions like "Will this activity / action support the City's goal?"

Pros

I had heard that it was a huge organization and there were many different areas of operations. So, there would be many opportunities for me. I found that this was not true as IT were all centralized into one hive hierarchy overseen by a new director that didn't seem to be in touch.

Clients in the business areas are getting nailed. Expected to delivery more services for less money need and want to get more IT services to achieve this. Not!!

IT is being rationed and the business operational areas are being squeezed. Being left out of key decision making.

Too many dinosaurs

Cons

No support for IT; New director is bad for morale and not able to communicate. Director not able to understand pressures being placed on staff.

No training. No learning opportunities.
Stagnant, unwilling to change, no communication, outdated, wastes money

Advice to Senior Management

Doing things the same way will always get you the same results.

Pros

Work life balance, good pension plan, job stability. The city is a good place to start building your career especially as somebody fresh out of school. There is enough challenge, and in spite of what most people think, goverment workers at the city do work hard. You will learn a lot and be ready for your leap to oil and gas.

Cons

Advancement based on union/city/manager needs not performance
Low paying relative to oil and gas
Pension plan drains paycheque for those who are just starting out and need every penny
The unions are tough to swallow as they restrict workers from being flexible, taking on tasks outside of their job description etc. etc. There is no need for a union in the 21st century.

Advice to Senior Management

Be concerned with the fact that you will have a lot of people retiring soon and you will not have competent people to replace them with as most young people will stay at the city enough to get some work experience and then leave.