Scottish Water Reviews

Cons

Public sector salary scales; change can be slower with more bureaucratic processes to wade through as there's politics and regulatory bodies to convince en route.

Cons

Low turnover. Because this company is such a good place to work, advancement can be difficult and, you may need to take a long and twisty route before you're pulling down decent wages, especially for Edinburgh.

We are absolutely terrible at large IT projects, and we don't learn lessons about who we contract out to, which applications to use, processes or UAT.

Cons

Employees there for less than 5 years are on temporary 3 or 6 month rolling contracts, no permanent positions are available.

Cons

The pay is pretty bad, even for a public sector company. Management will always put you on a development plan when moving internally so you don’t get the advertised salary when moving up.

Cons

Jobs not advertised - not all jobs are advertised and so career progression is subject to this handicap. This is regressive but it has happened for years and continues to happen despite changes in HR all the way up to the top - in other words, this is deeply embedded in Scottish Water's approach to recruitment and management of its personnel.

Water industry experience - if you work at Scottish Water, depending on which team you work for, you may not be able to move to other companies and so think about this long and hard if you are starting out in your career.

Low pay, even compared to councils - pay is considerably lower than at other companies and other public sector bodies. If you are starting out on a career or after you have completed the graduate programme, you will be disadvantaged after a few years compared to your friends who went to other companies or other public sector bodies. Pay does not increase with time - something not mentioned at interview, your pay is fixed and you will not go up the salary band unless you start a new job. So if you took a job at a council, at least you would move up the band over time. Therefore, think about your future - marriage, mortgate, kids - your expenses will go up but your Scottish Water salary will not. Also, will you be able to save for a deposit within a reasonable period or within the age parameters of attractive mortgages - don't understimate this question. A common recruitment tactic is to put people on a development plan so that even on day 1 of your job, you are not offered the internal base salary for the job. There can be a huge difference in salary for people doing the same job within a team and as you do not move up the salary band, this will not solve itself with time. Despite internal monitoring of salaries across departments and within teams, this is not dealt with by HR. When it comes to management and senior management pay however, the so called "public sector wage constraints" seems less of a constraint - you can just do internet searches with "salary" and "Scottish Water" to get information on this.

Pension - this used to be something recruiters would emphasize at interviews usually after quickly giving a nod to the salary. So think long and hard where an employer talks more about the pension than salary. However even with pension, it went from final salary to career average - so even the pension is no longer as attractive and given the low pay over your career, the career average pension is a double whammy.

Cons

Worst communication I have ever witnessed in a company. There is a high turnover rate for a reason. The management don't treat you anything more than a number. Makes it hard to think of the pros when the cons are so important.

Cons

After IR35 rule changes in afraid mossy contract jobs are viewed as inside IR35

Cons

Too much movement of staff. Too many contractors. Bullying at senior levels. Preference to male staff and women without families. A lot of covering up of true figures. An ancient version of P6 is used but final reports come from 'elsewhere'.

Cons

Managerial bullying , managerial self righteousness, H.R fully in the management control the managers oversee everything and have no real accountability other than to each other bullying corruption and self management are the words of the day with no comeback when a manager is dismissed he is paid off with a whopping great salary related pension and other sweetheart deals

Cons

Too much emphasis on meeting P6 spend profiles led to some people matching these & being better thought of rather than reporting reality and giving truthful variance explanations,l.