Pros
Brilliant work life balance, sometimes so good you feel degraded and useless. No expectations to be in the office at all, unless you're on secondment in which case you're forced in almost full time. For the most part, Arcadis offer a nice working environment. Can occasionally find yourself offering services on a nice scheme. £2,000 APC completion bonus. Be careful though, leaders have used this to reduce salary increases accordingly. Decent benefits, although no car allowance unless you're an Associate Director. A few lovely & genuine members of staff - some amongst the very best in the world at what they do.
Cons
Arcadis isnt the place to be for anyone ambitious /wanting to advance in their careers. Please don't join unless you are satisfied with staying at the same level or settling for less. Arcadis have openly lied about promoting staff and will refuse to document promotions in writing to cover their tracks. They have also made fake excuses to existing staff around why they don't deserve promotions. A huge sense of distrust within the Infrastructure/Mobility GBA in the UK in particular although also true for the Places GBA. If you are promised anything, get it in writing first, nobody can ever be trusted at Arcadis. Pathetic promotion process, have junior staff sitting on panels and completing 3/4 page documents just to move from Graduate to Assistant Cost or Project Manager. Team Directors can and will refuse to follow new guidelines. Many believe unpreferable treatment can and will be offered towards ethnic minorities especially when it comes to being promoted. Personally hard to say although I can understand why this is a belief at Arcadis amongst ethnic minority staff, Asians in particular just never seem get promoted or paid correctly no matter how good they are. Easy to feel discriminated against on a daily basis depending on what team you're in. Bonuses were kept at an astonishing £0.00 this year. Team Leaders and Senior staff were made to pretend that this was due to client and economic uncertainty I've never seen so many incompetent Senior members of staff in my life across all GBA's although completely understand that its due to Arcadis being such a huge yet fragmented organisation. The firm is forced to take on whoever they can find as there isn't enough talent in the industry as a whole. One Director sent a Project Cost Consultant into a mental breakdown in front of their client, the poor member of staff was forced to go on sick leave indefinitely. Disgustingly, this is quite commonplace at Arcadis and staff will be treated worse than trash if they don't fit a teams agenda. Very surprised they've not had more lawsuits from staff. Incompetent line management; in quire a few cases the line manager might as well be line managed by the person they think they are managing. They do not care about employee wellbeing whatsoever and will do what they can to manipulate internal your voice surveys responses from staff. Staff are known to sit out without any work or be thrown into secondments, only to be completely forgotten about by the firm. No incentive to promote staff on secondment either. Arcadis offer no personal touch to their staff experience, your made to feel like an almost irrelevant part of a huge organisation. Some of our staff, particularly in Cost and Commercial Management, have achievements that will likely never be matched in history yet the firm will not celebrate such achievements in the slightest. One of the most pathetic and uncoordinated RICS APC processes for Cost and Project Managers. In the firm's defence however, they've established an APC representation group lead by a few Chartered/Senior members of staff to try addressing this. Former CEO didn't appear to care about staff all that much and actually refused to speak with certain junior staff in London when he'd visit from overseas. So glad he's since been replaced. Teams can be widely spread across the country minimising contact time. Poor international opportunities - keep in mind that Arcadis are a failure in the middle east due to bad leadership and are still struggling in America. Very little organic growth. Australia appear to be doing well but don't value overseas staff the same. Internal processes are poorly managed and often complex/long winded. Policies not typically clear and in some cases are weak. Intercommunication / direction within team can be poor. Endless global/regional updates which have little to no day to day impact. Onboarding is very long, and mostly not helpful. Limited access to technical standards and documents. Pretend to care about staff when they only care about profits. More than happy to have staff start traveling into work from 5/6am and get back home at 9/10pm. Poor referral bonus scheme for internal staff, might as well let them pay way more to hire external recruiters. Pathetic IT, many staff abondon the cheap £50 Samsungs they provide and use a personal phone. Why be so tacky? No doubt others would have more to add to this, ask around!!!
