Direct Energy Texas Reviews

Pros

For many positions, they take the time necessary to ensure you're trained to an adequate level so as to not "throw you to the wolves" when it comes time to take over a position entirely.

Benefits packages are superb.

Compensation is fantastic compared to friends who are operating in similar positions with other companies in the area.

Cons

Long work hours at times, but these can often be offset with Fridays off.

Only major con would be that internal systems need a major overhaul compared to other companies of similar size.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on internal efficiency improvements, e.g. updating systems to be more reliable and less of a hassle to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

Pros

- Challenging environment, boosts employee confidence that they can be successful in extreme situations, once they have handled this.

Cons

Employees are always in a crisis mode. Long hours consistently and work life imbalance. Employees expected to put in 12 hrs daily average.

Reorganization is continuous, business is growing but company wants to support operations with lesser workforce. Management highly motivated to generate more and more profits for parent UK company, at cost of anything. Long term strategy does not have any mention of 'people'.

Senior Management changes are frequent and average seniority is 2-4 years. No upward career mobility.

Advice to Senior Management

Value employees and their development, not only profits. Good people generate better profits.

Pros

Leadership is trying their best to turn this company around and provide more opportunities for people. There is room to demonstrate value if you can take initiative and make things happen.

Cons

Bureaucracy is growing in the company, and there are cliques where certain information and decisions are kept. Company is struggling to grow, so career opportunities are likewise in the same place.

Pros

Good pay, good compensation. Previous senior management implemented right strategy to help the business growth.

Cons

Everything changed since a no brain president was brought on board. He started from no strategy to implement strategies without looking at overall impact. To eliminating 90% of the decision makers just because the business dislike the current location. To centralize 90% of the decision to a location has no decision making experience, no one cares about how the knowledge drains, no one cares about how long these decision makers have been contributing.

Advice to Senior Management

MUST BELIEVE that the knowledge drained as result of your strategies won't be recovered in next 5 years or more.

Pros

Newly re-modeled office space. Canadian Company so you get 2 more paid holidays than most companies.

Cons

Since early 2010, Sr. Management has absolutely wreaked havoc on what used to be a "Best Place to Work" and a "Best Place to Work for Commuters". I just cannot believe the demise that the company has seen. By the time I left in June, most of my co-workers were already gone. DE lost a lot of very respectable people with the shift in strategies. It became a "Sell, Sell, Sell" mentality with little interest in treating our customers worthy of staying with DE. And the people that left in droves voluntarily weren't enough.. The new senior management team eliminated positions that were not in Houston simply because they were not in Houston. Dozens of years of experience and loyalty to DE were disregarded just to have people in the same office building. I hope that the parent company and Centrica would put a stop to the disrespect of employees and institute some change because it truly used to be a best place to work.

Advice to Senior Management

STOP! Realize what you're throwing away so that you can seat people in the same proximity. Appreciate the years of service and loyalty these employees (the ones who are left) have committed. Remember that selling is only going to make the numbers look good for a little while unless you have a strong team focused on retaining customers. But, mostly, treat employees with respect! You'd be amazed at what you can get out of them if you do.

Pros

The salary and benefits at Direct Energy are attractive and may be above the industry standard. The Houston office also contains a great bunch of employees.

Cons

Though the salary and benefits are attractive, there is a lack of growth or career advancement opportunity. If you are looking to advance your career, in most cases the best option is to do it elsewhere.

Advice to Senior Management

Give employees something to look forward to in terms of professional growth within the company. Otherwise, you'll lose good people.

Pros

Great work-life benefits, but does not outweigh the political challenges. New Regime is British, and collaborative culture with heavy CPA trajectory a must to advance. Does this make sense for a Planning and business Development minded Finance professional? No.

Cons

Management crams canned- cultures down employees throats (i.e. open office space). Highly distractive work environment. Even Directors are getting put into cubicles.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat employees better, and reward performance.

Pros

Employee electricity rate discount provided
Direct Energy has a very liberal policy for non-customer facing employees to work remotely from centralized office locations.

Cons

Direct Energy absorbed the BPO client providing customer service to retail electric customers. The employees absorbed from the BPO company were not treated on an equal footing with existing Direct Energy employees. Pay rates were frozen along with losses of earned incentive compensation from the BPO acquisition.

Advice to Senior Management

Executive decisions made, surrounding the provisioning of customer service for retail electicity delivery are not soundly based on analytical evidence regarding cost effectiveness and merit, but rather on personal preference and bias by decision makers, resulting in unnecessary ballooning costs for customer service delivery.

Pros

Great Company to Work for family work balance.

Cons

Growing pains and mixed management signals. Also, unfairly let go of many employees in the past.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide opportunities and benefits of doubt to employees...they're not perfect but corporate dictates, at times, unfair and unwise decisions about employment.

Pros

Great people! Eveyrone really works hard to get the job done and you don't ever wonder if the job will get done, because it always does.

Cons

Sometime things move so fast that you don't get to really soak in the reason for a change. The communication is good, the market just moves really fast.

Advice to Senior Management

Thanks for your hard work!