water treatment specialist

electrical engineer

customer service representative

associate engineer

structural designer

Parsons

Working at Parsons Corporation has been an overwhelmingly negative experience. There is a serious lack of support from management, and employees are routinely left to deal with problems on their own. When issues come up, leadership is either unavailable or unwilling to step in, which creates a stressful and frustrating work environment.

The situation is made worse by the approach taken by safety advisors. Instead of being helpful or solutions-focused, they often come across as confrontational and out of touch with the realities on the ground. Rather than supporting workers, their behavior tends to create tension and discourage people from speaking up.

Overall, the culture feels disorganized, unsupportive, and at times outright hostile. There’s a clear disconnect between leadership and employees, and until that changes, it’s hard to see this as a place where people can succeed or feel respected.

Lowest paying company for entry-level environmental workers. Hard to survive on such a low salary. Top heavy with managers, not enough manpower in field at times. Minimal accountability by many employees, a lot only care about themselves. Some project managers and support staff are incompetent at what they do. Lots of the old boys club from Oconnor Associates is still employed here and refuse to adapt to the Parsons way of doing things, especially salary adjustments. The complete lack of integration between not only Parsons and O'Connor, but even between O'Connor and Delcan (Both acquired companies who work in the same office as "Parsons" - Many under the same roof don't even know each other or what they do)

job security often threatened at "slow times". Management makes workplace unpleasant at slow times so you are almost forced to use banked time. A lot of the work is nickel and dime jobs for large, overkill-on-safety clients 

Pros are there are some diamonds in the rough, good people to work with. Good place to gain good entry level experience. If another opportunity is presented to you go that way and don't look back, this place has no room for advancement in position, challenge, or especially pay.

Good operators keep leaving for better opportunities & management would rather let them go & hire new people than meet basic requirements that we ask for. We do not receive a LOA while all other departments do. It’s gotten so bad that a union has stepped in to negotiate fair wage that Parsons will not budge on.  Workplace culture is “it’s not my job”, “I don’t get paid enough”, “it’s not my problem”. Management is so disconnected to our needs they actually sat us all down to ask why people are leaving in droves. (10 in the last month) Our locker room reeks of sewage due to connected bathrooms. They’ve threatened to bring in contractors to do our job. Disorganized flight and travel plans, constantly changing. The new process superintendent is knowledgeable with water treatment but cannot deal with people and will throw you under the bus, threaten you, bully you, then ask you for a favour like staying in for extra days. They lowered their starting wage. They took away our wifi at the treatment plants, only wifi in a lunchroom that is leaking from the ceiling. They will however pay for water courses. There are still some good people that work here that want to be good employees. 

Management worries about trivial things most times, whilst being negligent toward more pressing issues.

Job is 90+% travel to undesirable places and worksites, for very minimal pay. The job is absolutely thankless, very stressful, ridiculous safety programs and mostly imcompetent technical project staff who have no idea what it's like in the field. 

The workplace culture is very much toxic. There is no reward for hard work and dedication. This company has very high turnover for a reason and thus are always short staffed, contributing to even more stress and work load for the people who can bear it, albeit even they are halfway out the door. 

If you are someone in the environmental business with less than 30 years of experience, do not work here. Your career growth will be stagnant, if not regressive.

Everything at this company is structured around avoidance of blame. No ideas or suggestions are offered for fear of being fired, criticised, and penalized. Most field employees suffer mental illness while or after working here.

For more than 60 years Parsons Inc. has been at the forefront of infrastructure and technology, providing engineering excellence, quality solutions and superior service to our clients. Parsons Inc.award-winning projects range from computerized traffic control systems and wetland remediation, to the oversight and quality management of some of the world´s most impressive infrastructure programs.

Parsons Inc. has gained international recognition by virtue of our innovation, quality and commitment to clients. Parsons Inc. impressive skill sets are enhanced by our strategic relationships with local and international partners, within both government organizations and the private sector. The result is a dynamic alliance that better enables Parsons Inc. to respond to greater challenges around the world and to offer an even broader range of value-added services to our clients.

This is not an awful company but it does have some glaring flaws.

The environmental division is extremely middle management heavy, leading to overmanagement and disproportionate numbers of hours/budget used up at the project management level.

Projects staff are often chosen for reasons of personal favouritism rather than technical expertise or experience, a practise tacitly condoned by upper management.

This often leads to poor planning, communication, decision making, and eventually - poor results.

The culture is highly risk averse. Few, if any, novel ideas are proposed for fear of failure or rejection, and safety and project delivery are structured aroumd avoidance of blame.

Management is committed to work/life balance and schedules and holidays are flexible and easy to amend if needed.

Poor Management. If you bring something up to supervisor as an issue in the workplace it will be used against you. Rushed when it does not need to be if it is properly planned. My contract had literally nothing in it and I found out all the horrible details later like.. You pay for you own gas to get 4 hours to site (reiumbursed maybe months later). No Live out allowance and you provide all your own food at your own cost. No pay for travel time to and from site daily. Favoratism. They like to make you feel dumb for asking questions to learn. Supervisors would rather talk behind your back than come to you with how they would like things done to your face. 

This was by far the worst place I worked in my career. This specific location operates more like a high school than a business; people are promoted based on favoritism rather than merit or seniority with the company. Management can often be caught gossiping about staff in their offices. I know that myself and three other employees developed mental health issues while working here. Pay is also severely lagging behind competitors. Staff retention is nil, unless you're a favourite or are still on their "we will make you a manager eventually" hook.

There is no advancement in Parsons Winnipeg office, and three project managers have terrible interpersonal skills with employees. They always treat employees with rude and respectfulness altitude and put snitches in the team. One project manager is very unprofessional(not major in environmental services and engineering field) and can not provide any supports for field techs. Employees can easily get metal illness if they choose to work in Parsons Winnipeg Office.

Parsons is a well structured company. The culture of the company is great. The company embrace diversity and embrace inclusion. The management is approachable and supportive. The only downside is that Parsons is a big Corporation which has the projects all over the world. Sometimes you may be posted to work in a differnt City of Country. 

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Water treatment specialist 3 salaries reported	$27.47 per hour
Electrical engineer 3 salaries reported	$61,333 per year
Customer service representative 3 salaries reported	$21.33 per hour
Associate engineer 3 salaries reported	$70,067 per year
Structural designer 1 salary reported	$130,000 per year

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