ECORYS Reviews

It could have been great, but there were major issues during my time there: --the type of work they do --the type of people working there --low pay --Ecorys as a company was not designed or setup well to support new hires during the Coronavirus pandemic. The type of work they do: The work they do is boring, mostly low-value, bottom of the barrel projects that competitors do not want to do. Ecorys did not have an ‘A-team’ that was capable of winning high-value sexy projects. The type of people working there: There are a lot of 'lifers' in upper management and some senior consultants that have been there for a very long time who are complete jerks and bullies and lead contrary to the company values and Code of Conduct. The organisation is very dysfunctional because of this and they are co-dependent on one another and cover each other’s backs to protect themselves and their own jobs when they make mistakes or are faced with any problem or criticism. They have created their own private fiefdom and view questions as challenges to their authority or a sign of incompetency and are not open to suggestions or input from their team. They do not take accountability to learn anything about the day-to-day of the employees they lead. There is no teamwork. There is no leadership or direction. Everyone was out for themselves with no accountability for management's own errors or mismanagement. If anything goes wrong (and it will), it will be YOUR fault. Some of the directors and senior managers are bullies and are just horrible people (as previous reviews on Glassdoor mentioned) and will yell and scream at you with no recourse. The culture is toxic and there is no limit to what is acceptable behaviour at Ecorys: temper tantrums, yelling, bullying, verbal abuse, lying, deliberate overloading of work by senior colleagues is tolerated. If you raise concerns about the bullying or your workload capacity, anything you say will be used against you and your words will be twisted and your job terminated. Office politics are really bad. There was backstabbing and scheming going on behind the scenes by two-faced lying colleagues. I did not trust the people I worked with here. Although the company is Dutch and headquartered in Amsterdam, I was unpleasantly surprised that there was not a single Dutch person that actually worked in the UK offices. As a result, there is no Dutch working culture or any Dutch leadership styles. Which could have been OK, but some of the senior leadership team and senior consultants are "Little Englander" Brexit-y types and they have imperialised the whole office behaving like they are superior to everyone else on the planet and can be very patronising and abusive towards colleagues that don't fit into this group. If you go against their status quo in any way or stand up for yourself, they will smugly ‘put you in your place’. The working culture is fixed and very set in working ‘in the old way’ and very hierarchal. The leadership is not open to new ways of working and collaboration or innovation and is very resistant to change. Despite some multinational teams working there, some of the British senior staff here are actually covertly very prejudiced. These people are not capable of building rapport with colleagues from all around the world and will not treat the international people as an equal team member if their face doesn’t fit. There is very little diversity. I would not recommend working at Ecorys UK because you will be outnumbered by very intolerant and resentful old dinosaurs working here and an easy target for bullying and harassment. Low pay: The high turnover rate is an indicator of the bad working environment here (latest figures were over 20%). My colleagues were patronising micromanagers and extremely controlling. Project managers have a lack of trust towards their own colleagues, which leads to micro-managing, bullying, and nitpicking of work. Work-life balance is not respected. I was actually told it was an expectation to work on weekends and it seems to be an unwritten rule to work overtime and not report it on your timesheet and to be available 24/7. You will be shamed for taking annual leave that is rightfully yours. But salaries are the lowest I have ever seen for a consultancy company and are not competitive or in line with the market averages. I wonder how they manage to retain people on such low pay and high workload in London. For the salaries they pay for senior consultant positions, one could get a non-consulting entry-level job elsewhere for about the same pay and half the workload. It was apparent that Ecorys UK struggled with talent acquisition because teams were lacking in relevant skills and experience and they could not attract talent with the right skills or experience in specific sectors while I was there. Some good employees are placed in roles where they could not reach their full potential. Incredible employees were pushed out by bullying or would either disengage and leave or underperform since the projects they were assigned to misaligned with their actual strengths and talent. Awful employees stay here because they have nowhere else to go. New hires here are bully bait because they have no power to defend themselves. -Ecorys as a company was not designed or setup well to support new hires during the Coronavirus pandemic. New hires were setup to fail. Just very poor or no support. I specifically asked about onboarding and training in my interview and it was not delivered as promised. No onboarding, training or guidance of most internal company processes or procedures for new hires, yet new hires were expected to know everything already or to teach themselves at home remotely. My line manager was lazy, hands-off and unavailable and didn’t do her job properly. Kafkaesque performance reviews were run like show trials and not done on time according to my employment contract and the company policies. I was given excuses why this was the case. There was zero employee appreciation at Ecorys for the hard work you did. The Directors expect you to slave away on very low salaries while bullying their employees into submission. Our bonuses were taken away during the Coronarvirus lockdown and there were no other incentives to work any harder since you wouldn’t receive even as little as a ‘thank you’ for any good work you actually did do. The Bottom Line: Ecorys is a really bad place to work. Ecorys does not care about its employees, only its own profits. You’ll be treated just slightly above cattle in Texas. Pay is low and on par with slavery wages. Managers are bullies and will get away with bad behaviour. You will not have a life outside of work. Proceed with caution accepting a role here at your own risk. Advice to Jobseekers: You don't want this job unless it's your last resort. If you have no self-respect, don’t mind low pay and generally being treated like gum stuck on the bottom of your manager’s shoes, then go ahead and apply now. You have been warned.