Plenty of Managers but no Leadership - Associate Director Urbis Employee Review

Nice offices and good location close to transport.

I was based in the Parramatta team and my comments are as follows: - Remuneration is well below market rate. Smaller firms are offering much higher salaries even though their hourly charge out rates are the same or less. - Expectation that senior consultants undertake B2B tasks for the purpose of bringing in work / clients even though this is outside the scope of their KPIs and typically a responsibility of a Director. - Unfair allocation of cost overruns to juniors without consultation which directly impacts their bonus and revenue targets. - Insufficient work to facilitate the career progression of staff. Most staff were desperate for work and found it difficult to fill out their timesheets. Additionally, work allocation is inequitable with female staff disproportionally impacted by the lack of billable work. - Male dominated with no females in senior leadership positions. - Poor project management from directors / senior staff who set completely unrealistic deadlines for major deliverables and brought deadlines forward without sufficient notice. For this reason the workplace culture does not support work-life balance and is not ideal for people who have family commitments. - Often there was no review of reports prior to submission to external parties due to time constraints and poor project management. - All staff are required to be in the office 4 days a week however I only saw my line manager a handful of times during 2023 and once the following year. Emails and requests to review work were often ignored. Very few regular checkins and the standard performance appraisal process that is meant to apply to all staff was not adhered to meaning there was little support or mentoring. - High turnover amongst female staff who are concentrated at the lower levels. Most promotions over the past few years have been awarded to male staff. - Time spent preparing fee proposals and tenders (which contributes to generating billable work for other staff) is directly deducted from your annual revenue target. - Technical capabilities of some senior managers were questionable. For example, projects were scoped as SSD even when there was a question mark over whether it was regional development or the Director didn't know the site area which had implications for how the client formulated unit yields and GFA calculations, leading to problems later down the track.

Nice office with plenty of morning teas, free breakfast daily and some lovely and knowledgeable staff

Toxic managers with unrealistic expectations and damaging management styles resulting in high staff turnover and low team morale. Pay is also not competitive compared to other firms.