HR Fishing for Good Reviews to Boost CEO Rating - Anonymous employee Black & Veatch Employee Review

1.0
Feb 26, 2023
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Not much anymore…after almost 13 years I’m finally on a good team with a supervisor who actually knows and understands the work we do and is willing to help when we get overloaded…very rare in this company.

Cons

Where do I begin, this is my second review since the RTO announcement on Dec.1st and I am more unhappy than ever, especially after last week’s owner’s meeting which was 4 wasted hours of my life I’ll never get back. None of the important questions were answered like “how will you regain employee owner’s trust” after we were lied to about WINW not going away or “how will you know that RTO is working”. Mario had his say and then was unwilling to answer any questions on the topic. We get the same pat answer “while we know change is hard, we feel this new hybrid work model is the best for our culture and the future of the company”. I’m tired of being spoken to like I’m a child, it’s not even about change, it’s about being lied to. People made changes to their lives, sold cars, spouses quit their jobs since they didn’t have daycare expenses anymore, children who never had to go to daycare and after school care are now having to and it’s traumatic and scary for them after they have been home with mom and dad. Mario said in the meeting “yes I too enjoyed WFH and being with my dog”. Are you freaking kidding me?!?! How much more out of touch could you possibly be?!?! To make matters worse, doesn’t look like our cost of living increase is going to be any more this year even with inflation and the additional costs employees are now going to incur (car expenses, daycare, gas, etc.). And then the 50 mile rule…50 miles in SoCal is not the same as 50 miles in KC. So I spend hours commuting, to go into an office where I work with literally nobody, sit in a cube that I have to share with others, so I can’t even make it my home away from home, to sit on teams and collaborate with my coworkers the same way I was at home. Meanwhile I am stressed to the max, worried about my kids, I have less money with all the new added expenses and long commutes to and from the office where I speak to literally nobody because they have to reason to speak to me, we’re literally in different divisions. My quality of life has gone down drastically since RTO, I am sad and stressed and miss being there for my kids like I once was. BV has become a mean company, heartless and cold. They silenced us on our company’s social networking page, but you can’t silence us on Glassdoor, even if HR goes fishing for good reviews to increase Mario’s rating…pathetic! You have to earn that good rating and you most certainly haven’t. We are not the loud minority, we are the majority and our displeasure is not just gonna go away.

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5.0
Jun 3, 2026
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Pros

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Cons

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Black & Veatch Response
1mo
Thank you for leaving a review! We appreciate the feedback!
1.0
Jul 2, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Fair starting compensation, the team I lead is very dedicated, the onboarding process is very smooth, there are opportunities to mentor and be mentored.

Cons

The current performance management process is deeply flawed. Leaders collect ratings from managers and supervisors, then gather in a room with peers to “calibrate.” During this meeting, a predetermined percentage of employees must receive low ratings. At one point, someone referred to this as “forced ratings,” and the IT leader became visibly upset, insisting that it was not. However, I was present for the discussion: we lowered ratings, checked the spreadsheet, lowered more ratings, checked the spreadsheet again, and repeated this cycle until we hit the percentage the IT leader said had to be met. From conversations with peers outside of IT, this appears to be a common practice across the organization. Unfortunately, the approach often results in employees receiving ratings that do not accurately reflect their actual performance. These artificially lowered ratings directly affect merit increases and bonuses—even if the bonuses are relatively small—creating consequences that feel at best unfair. Regardless of what label is used, the experience felt undeniably forced.

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