Scottish Water Reviews

Cons

Lab shifts not family friendly

Cons

Working at Scottish Water requires pan Scotland travel

Cons

Very political environment
Progression to on my those friendly with management
Negative working atmosphere
Unfair treatment of staff

Cons

Can be slow to change

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

Don't really know how to get the best out of contractors
Permanent staff are keen amateurs, but insist on trying to manage their expert contractors
Not open to ideas they didn't come up with (or copy off the internet) themselves

Cons

Career progression is not actually possible for the majority as all the jobs are given without open interview to the clones who are selected for Future Leader scheme. No new ideas no innovation no future. You wont learn anything new at SW. When you try to leave you will fail a competency based interview as SW ideas are so backwards. Q "how did you solve xx problem?" A " I asked my supervisor, who asked his manager who asked the Director who asked the CEO. Then we all did exactly what we were told to do" It doesn't matter what level you are, all decisions come from above. You will spend so much time pulling together PowerPoints to ask a decision question from above for an answer you already know. SO POINTLESS.

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.