ERM reviews

-There's been an exodus because they over hired and furloughed tons of people. There goes expertise, connections, and any ability to join the two -Young people leave to progress, old timers started their career elsewhere -That exodus took with them tons of competent staff who are now taking that work away from ERM. They lost 75% of one of their largest client's business segments and what seems like 50% of another part of that portfolio. -You need to sell yourself internally to get put on projects, but after a literal 1000+ emails and over 100+ networking calls, no one has any work to give, its the same with all the PMs & other consultants I talked to -The company got into bed with private equity that required something crazy like a 20% return, EACH YEAR, which is insane. How did they do it? They increased billing rates to a point where they're no longer cost competitive. The company can't sell projects, so who pays? Staff. There goes your raise, bonus, any path of legitimate progression, there goes your job if you're not billable enough, thats why people are furloughed. If you promote, you're more expensive to bill, so you'll have to 'donate' hours or work hours you can't bill, which means you can't hit your billable goal -How would you hit your billable goal? What they call 'Secondants' where you report to a client site and live there for months on end, and it's never anywhere nice (e.g. Fargo), otherwise they could staff it. But it's still not enough to hit your goal, so you don't get a raise or promotion -'Half Step' promotions make it near impossible to progress, people have to quit and come back in is the old joke -You need to be billable, but they didn't have work, so they furloughed staff or they left -Favoritism is everywhere, if you're new, you'll have a really hard time breaking in to the projects that would make you billable. During a 'Grow the firm' meeting, I asked about the 'Billions of dollars' of dollars of work available, "How can I get involved?", "Well, it's already staffed..." "How can I train to get involved in the next one?" "You kinda just have to...do it", so you cant get the experience to get onto projects that would yield you that experience. Any young person would be wise to stay out and long timer would be smart to leave

North American Senior Management, especially Regional CEO. The business has evolved away from a commercially-led and growth minded organization to a tactically driven organization driven by numbers and short term results. The current NA CEO is no more than a glorified Project Manager implementing the ROI priorities dictated to her by Global management and the private equity investors. She is in way over her head, and is incapable of an original or strategic thought. She has surrounded herself with status quo people just like herself squandering the brainpower brought in through acquisition and outside hires. As a result, internal optics and management appeasement rule the day at the expense of client and people priorities. I can't comment on the Global CEO - he was brand new when I left. Seems like a decent guy but clearly brought in by the PE team to drive ROI. Other cons fall under the people category. Compensation is generally below industry standards while productivity expectations remain high creating a sweatshop type culture. Benefits are fair but not great. Also, technology and innovation is way behind competitors. With respect to the Sustainability brand, ERM has done a decent job around that but what gets hidden here is the fact that the vast majority of the revenues come from old school environmental services like remediation and EHS with a client base built around carbon-intensive and extractive technologies like Big Oil and Mining. On one hand, they promote saving the planet while cashing big checks from those who are destroying it.