Westat Reviews

Pros

Flexible working schedule.
Business casual attire.
Meet interesting people in the field.
Now get $.555 per mile for travel expense.

Cons

Pay scale is lower than the industry standard.
Westat is incredibly cheap and nickel and dime you at every chance.
They require receipts for anything over $1, yes $1.
No comunication from Senior Management and supervision is weak to mediocre at best.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve your communication, management and information systems. Try trusting your Field Data Collectors and don't be so cheap.

Pros

Facilities are great.
Gym and cafeteria a plus.

Cons

Nothing for people without a degree

Advice to Senior Management

offer training to supervisors of temp employeees

Pros

Work schedule is flexible depending on position
Nice cafeteria with healthy option
Gym for fitness freaks

Cons

Favorism is rampant.
You will not get the salary you deserve for your work unless you are dancing to the managers tunes,
Lots of office politics and talk in the back. Be ready to work double loads as some managers have favorites and their work will be handed over to you and manager's "favorites" spend hours chit-chatting

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure to make surprise visits to administrative departments and conduct interviews with departmental employees to handle favorisms.

Pros

A few opportunities to get research experience and work on different projects
Can work remotely but limited for local people
Nice cheap cafeteria and gym
Pay for graduate degrees if willing to commit to 2 years post-degree

Cons

Only one track for promotion presented to me which is note-taking for client meetings, and fragmented budget process, no mentoring or training. Senior people still run client meetings and make decisions so real opportunity for leadership.
Very top-heavy environment and completely dependent on senior people to get on proposals and give you work and decide what role you play.
 Lines are not clear as to what you can initiate.
Pressure to work on more than one project and then you are not treated same as FT people who get more perks.
Everyone works on billable hours so pressure to be always busy, bill to multiple projects, and have enough work which results often in OT but no "comp" time arrangement.
If you raise issues or questions about process with clients, there can be internal repercussions.
Depends on client, but regulations and constraints make hard to do job effectively.

Advice to Senior Management

Spend more time on clear communication with employees, develop more than one professional career track for different roles, respect employees work style and opinions, and reward people with a few perks if can't increase salary.

Pros

It's stable. Once employed, if you do your work it is highly unlikely that you will be fired.
Everyone is friendly. It's a relaxed and relatively non-competitive company to work in and for.
The benefits package is excellent--which I did not appreciate until I left-Particularly the retirement package. You don't realize it until after that they have essentially helped force you to save for retirement so it puts you at a long term advantage.

Cons

There are few opportunities for clear growth. Professional development is not adequately supported or even understood. Direct communication is often not done--so if someone is doing bad frequently the manager will complain to everyone EXCEPT the person in question. Ridiculous. I worked on 6 different projects and saw it happen over and over again. It's a very subversive culture and unproductive.

Advice to Senior Management

Clean up house. HR is out of touch with current practices. They need reeducation and a push to implement new procedures and methods.
Professional development of all staff is essential to staying competitive. Encourage education and certifications. It will make you more competitive.
Encourage new ideas and provide clear salary scale and career growth scales so people can see where they are and what they need to do to get to where they want to be.

Pros

Company has a great training program, and the work is interesting. The flexibility is the best part of this job, and the weekly communication from supervisor is helpful.

Cons

No full time work
Pay lower than industry standard
Old school technology
Do lots of work without really accomplishing anything

Advice to Senior Management

Offer more hours
Really need to update technology
Need to cut down on unnecessary paperwork
Offer more for mileage allowance

Pros

- Westat is full of intelligent hard-working individuals
- It's a good place to develop basic research skills
- It has a large campus with a convenient gym and cafeteria
- Everyone gets their own office

Cons

- Not within walking distance of metro
- While it's a good place to develop skills, you will likely end up doing the same thing over again. There is not enough variety of work for lower-level staff.
- Colleagues are hit or miss, same as any workplace
- Senior management could do a better job of introducing projects to staff and updating them on developments. I never know what half the other people on my teams are doing.
- Too many meetings.

Advice to Senior Management

- Allow more freedom for employees to choose the projects they work on.
- Give a greater variety of tasks and responsibilities.
- Don't require staff to attend meetings when they have a minimal role in a project.

Pros

Flexibility, tolerance, employee owned. Attractive stock ownership plan.

Cons

Emails often fall upon deaf ears. Many supervisors are vindictive by nature.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to develop younger senior level managers that can better compete for Federal contracts. The top five managers at Westat are all over 65 years of age. Seek managers on all levels that are open to new ideas and are willing to listen to subordinates, no matter who they are.

Expedite communication among company channels. Too slow!

Convert from (antiquated) paper studies to automated studies, such as Medical Provider Component (MPC) of Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS). Westat lost MPC contract in part because they did not introduce more automation to this lucrative contract Westat held for over 12 years as a paper study.

Pros

- Great peole
- Good benefits
- Nice facilities

Cons

- Work can be boring
- Some office politics
- Pace was slow

Advice to Senior Management

promote people faster

Pros

Private office
Nice campus
Professional membership reimbursement
Professional development

Cons

Toxic work culture (interpersonal backbiting, low morale, demoralized workers)
Internal competition within the company
Favoritism is rampant
Lower pay than comparable positions at employers in this area

Advice to Senior Management

Managers should be assessed as competent for reasons other than seniority at the company
Employees have fine ideas about improving work culture & approach and are given no voice
Quality of work should be higher priority--try to avoid demeaning staff interested in improving it