Sempra Energy Reviews

Pros

Good exercise. Good pay considering you don't need any experience or education other than high school level english and math. Full benefits after 1 year at a pretty cheap price.

Cons

Depending on your base hours can get scarce. Moving into a full-time position is extremely difficult. Over-staffed, so it takes forever to get into a full-time position.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to present employees with more union/comany related info for future of the company so that they can be more well-informed as to the status of their jobs in the future.

Pros

Above the market salaries
The benefits and perks
Incredible bonuses
Little work and a lot of Play
If you are exempt then you have a potential opportunity to achieve a promotion to a higher career position.
Very generous with supplies and tools to do the job.

Cons

If you are hourly, then you will never be able to obtain a promotion or a transfer.
Management will undermine you when you attempt to obtain another position.
There is no confidentiality with upper management and especially Human Resources.
If you are a happy person then management will look for ways to bring you down - like accuse you of a wrongful thing.

Upper management is encourage to say "I don't remember;" instead of flat out lying.
Company is big on relaliation and they encourage it via their lawyers

Advice to Senior Management

Be Fair
Be Honest
Don't be Jealous or envious of your staff members
Remember you are making 100% more than your employees, cut them a break.
When Upper Management celebrates the success that the staff members created, give them credit for it; instead of accepting all the credit and bonus pay for it. Also when you guys celebrate with liquor in the first level cafe and auditoriums during work hours; please consider allowing the actual workers to go home early.

Pros

Good benefits. Good work/life balance. Generally a happy place to work. If you are seen as being a high value employee, they will find places for you in the company - although it may not be the job you want.

Cons

Not many women above manager level. Not proactive about getting rid of non-performing employees - instead just shuffles them around to different departments.

Advice to Senior Management

none

Pros

the pay is good, the bonus structure makes it great.
benefits are good, too.

Cons

Executive management gives information to employees on a need-to-know basis. Most of the time it seems that employees do not need to know much.
Sempra Energy doesn't get too attached to the assets it possesses, some of those assets are the people working for the company.

Advice to Senior Management

no advice for now.

Pros

Great people who are very friendly and more than willing to help you learn.
Interesting work in a dynamic industry.
Great work/life balance.
San Diego.

Cons

Very bureaucratic culture, the company is very risk averse so they do not act on many opportunities.
Very hard to move up, HR has very strict guidelines for promotions which are based more on tenure than ability (at least at the lower levels).

Advice to Senior Management

Be much more clear in the strategic direction of the company. Being open to anything makes it much harder for employees to know which types of opportunities to be looking for.

Pros

You can't beat working at the headquarters in downtown San Diego. The pay is competitive and bonuses are supposedley among the best in the industry (for unregulated/Global Enterprises entities).

Cons

This is a huge corporation... very beurocratic and departmentalized. If you do not enjoy the position you are in you may be in trouble. This is the kind of place where you can end up feeling pigeonholed.

Advice to Senior Management

Encourage cross-departmental training. Inspire employees to care about and to learn more about the business. Provide more opportunity for employees to grow and progress.

Pros

This company is great in that it is very stable. During the economic downturn there were no lay-offs and some employees actually received raises. The benefits package is also great having medical, dental, vision, life insurance, 401K, and a defined contribution pension. There is also a yearly bonus which ranges between 10 and 23 percent based on personal performance and company performance.

Cons

This company is slow to promote employees. This is compounded by the fact that most employees never leave. Many employees have been with the company for over 20 years. There are also some poor managers within the company. The culture of the company seems to assume that if a person masters an area of expertise they will make a great manager and that is often not the case.

Advice to Senior Management

Managers should be scroutinized more closely. If there seems to be a high turn-over rate within a department/organization there is probably a leadership problem within that organization. Also, consider soliciting ideas from younger employees in ways to improve the technology utilized by overhead personnel. Many things are done in highly inefficient ways because more senior employees are unwilling to change or are not willing to utilize newer, more productive and efficient technologies.

Pros

Some departments were wonderful and people were loyal, dedicated and worked for several years until retirement. I think that's how it is for most of Sempra and I would love to work there again, just in another department

Cons

Internal department politics played into how I felt about my experience at Sempra.

Advice to Senior Management

Ensure that hiring decisions are made in an environment that welcomes an outside candidate into a healthy department and into a healthy team. The new hire is empowered to use their experience and knowledge that made them qualified to work there in the first place.

Pros

It's a cool environment, you don't work too hard and the salary is OK. Overall a good job. And the girls are hot.

Cons

The colleagues sometimes are rather mean and the environment is too conservative, therefore I don't really feel good sometimes but it's OK

Advice to Senior Management

They should just try to be more liberal and be less Republican and understand that some employees are Democrats and proud

Pros

If you live in San Diego, then this is one of the few corporations that have an HQ there.

Cons

Hard to progress as fast as if you worked for financial services/adivising/consulting and then jumped into industry.

Advice to Senior Management

I would say that they are doing an OK job.