GHD Reviews

Top heavy management, and those sitting at the top "managing" don't even know how to manage. Lots of money spent on marketing, business development, and extra paper work with absolutely no results whatsoever. Those who are pulling in the work/money are the project engineers and technical staff, only to see it wasted by overhead and promotional knick-knacks, and extra admin time from all the extra forms we have to fill. The engineers/technical staff work extremely hard (50-60 hr work weeks) and management wants more. Many prominent staff who are well respected in their field of work have left within the last 3 years and there were absolutely no means of trying to keep them. Instead, they were cited as "not team players". Massive lay-offs at the financial year-end (May/June) with no notice to other staff; you'd be trying to contact the person about a project and then a day later you'd discovered they were let go. Your performance is based on your utilization (project bill out) and if it dips below 80% you can expect a pink-slip... everything is number based, in fact, you're nothing but a number. If your company is part of a merger/acquisition to GHD you will notice that GHD will protect their own staff, not your company's. Salary is extremely low... you can expect to be making $15K less than the Ontario average (as issued by the Professional Engineers of Ontario) and if your role has changed there is no increase. You'll be lucky to receive inflation. My advice to whoever is considering this firm, is to run... fast.

No training at all- was denied training and bullied by supervisors when I asked for it. No pathways for advancement, no organization of role/expectations/resources. Was physically harassed by a Sr. Engineer and the HR rep protected him even though he admitted to grabbing me- did not follow through with investigation for over a month after incident until enough pressure was applied, then told me I was not allowed to know the outcome, just "trust them" that it was "dealt with". Extremely poor management of projects and deadlines- multiple people had seizures or blacked out on the work floor due to stress, several hospitalizations, VERY long work days with no ability to manage it- it's just thrown on you last minute. Managers are overloaded and don't have the capacity to manage people, leads to little or no people management, hense no support in role. Support staff is systemically undermined and ignored- only technical staff matter to the company. Extordinarily poor change-management. Definitely earns their reputation of a sweat shop.