RWE npower Reviews

Current Employee – been working at RWE npower full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Not stressful, good worklife balance.
Generally willing to invest resources in training.
Nice office with good restaurant .
Gym (apparently).

Cons – Slow progression, benefits and flexibility could be better.
Recent reduction in staff has resulted in lower levels of expertise.
Achievement and exceptional results not rewarded / distinguished.
Uninspiring location.

Advice to Senior Management – Better rewards for performance.
Clearer strategy

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at RWE npower full-time for more than a year

Pros – Benefits and pay are above average for tech role.

Good colleagues to work with at ground level, some of which are highly talented and underrated.

Some improvements to delivery areas in recent times.

Cons – Senior Management not understanding their sub-teams treating them in a broad brush manner with edicts, showing inflexibility and lack of understanding especially of how technical teams work.

Highly politicised, focusing on what the perception of the team is to other departments.

Feels like a lack of trust in their staff to do the job.

Poor planning, with unreasonable expectations of delivery in some areas.

Constant Reshuffles / restructuring make the working environment feel uneasy and people demoralised.

Management and teams not communicating vertically or horizontally, with a lack of understanding or overview of what each team does.

there's a high turnover of permanent technical staff. Most seem to leave within a 12-18 month window, leaving one or two teams under-resourced and difficult to hire for. Contractors seem to wield more power and are treated better than permanent staff in some areas.

Advice to Senior Management – Please start treating people as humans, not as just a place in an org chart.

Understand more about how a delivery can happen within a team if you treat them as adults not children. Place your trust in your staff more to deliver and support them positively.

So long as the team delivers, it's all that matters. It should not be about how the outside view to other departments is. Good results will speak for themselves, so communicate genuine success.

Admit when things aren't going as well as you'd like, and communicate in an open and honest fashion if this is the case, not sweeping it under the carpet.

Make concerted effort to positively retain your staff by engaging with them in a sincere fashion. We're all trying to achieve the same thing for the greater good of the company and customer.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at RWE npower full-time for more than a year

Pros – A lot of experienced people to learn from, a lot of oportunities to move between departments and subsidiries. Great for grads.

Cons – Swindon is not the most pleasant city in the world.

Advice to Senior Management – Good job, guys. I really enjoyed time in the company. It is just a time to move on.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at RWE npower full-time for less than a year

Pros – full support and easy to progress

Cons – recently they are cutting down on jobs.

Advice to Senior Management – have employee feedback all the way to top in 1 annunal meeting.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at RWE npower

Pros – Nice location, Good facilities, Free parking

Cons – Little known about life in the real world and real people.

Advice to Senior Management – Please thnk about being able to have staff take responsibilty for their actions and not seek to pass tasks and work on to other areas.....

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at RWE npower

Pros – 9-5 job - no overtime.

Cons – Very political ex civil service organsiation - lack of communication and vision.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at RWE npower

Pros – Lots of opportunity to move around the company and work in different areas to develop skills outside area of expertise. Most locations have flexible working hours and there are a great deal of very highly skilled people employed here.

Cons – No performance related bonus. Some stubborn HR policies.

Advice to Senior Management – What is the company strategy? No clear messages from board level about what npower intend to do in the future. UK generation industry needs massive reform in coming years- where does npower see itself in the future market?

Current Employee – been working at RWE npower

Pros – Flexible working and good work colleagues

Cons – Lots of reshuffles and constant changes

Advice to Senior Management – None

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at RWE npower

Pros – Started out as the MEB at which time it was a good place to work, flexible and trusting and empowering people to get work done. Some of the flexibility remained once RWE had taken over

Cons – Poor people management. Virtually zero training (none in 5 years). Poor feedback and lack of recognition for any effort put in. Happy to try and bully people into worse contracts with demotions. Unable to trust staff, or allow anything to be done without large amounts of paperwork. Slow to respond to other areas of the business, and virtually unresponsive to the individual staff. Tried to rely on self justified bonus schemes which left those with poor self confidence at a disadvantage while pushing those with a high self opinion into telling lies to justify their bonus.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to staff and try to use staff in areas in which they are suited (both technically and emotionally). For example, come up with a non management career progression ladder, to avoid forcing those who have no people skills going into management to get a pay rise. Attempt to treat people fairly.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at RWE npower

Pros – In general my experience was of a co-operative environment, with colleagues keen to help each other, and do a good job.
Before the recession led to cut-backs, they placed great emphasis on putting on genuinely inspirational events where directors would present their review of progress.

Cons – Some significant mismatches in physical environment and culture between the many sites, so that the experience of staff and their perception of the Company will vary dependent on their location.
Similarly, leadership from above was very dependent on department/site.

Advice to Senior Management – It was the worst kept secret in the world that senior team members didn't get on with each other and/or didn't want the jobs they have ended up with - even if that is the case you should be inspiring and leading your people, and presenting a united front.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend