Pros
* We have offices and projects all over the world, and if travel is your passion there are certainly opportunities that you can take to transfer to another office, or be relocated temporarily for a project - once you show your capabilities. * I have found that Stantec appreciates the "go-getter" and people who can work independently with slight nudges to the right direction. In many cases, there is a lot of autonomy given to those who come in and can be self sustaining. * In my experience, Stantec makes a point to think about the teams they put together. This goes both for the makeup of an office or group within an office, as well as teams on projects. They recognize the value of all people, compared to only wanting to hire / work with one type (example: the strong outgoing leader-type). They put a lot of effort into helping employees understand their emotional intelligence and their work personality, and then assists by offering strategies for communication and education surrounding teamwork at all levels and from all personalities. * Stantec's culture of Inclusion & Diversity (read: acceptance of all people) is growing stronger every day. There are great initiatives and programs that are starting to happen like company-wide Unconscious Bias training, employee resource groups spanning many sub-sections of our employees, including: women@stantec, pride@stantec, indigenous connexions, IWD@stantec (IWD = Individuals with disabilities), veterans@stantec, latinos@stantec, with more groups constantly being proposed. * I have been fortunate to work with many leaders within Stantec who are really willing to lift me up and give me opportunities to grow both technically, and through travel and interesting projects! * Energetic, flexible and creative people will find a ton of opportunities here at Stantec. Once they are established, there really is no reason they can't do the exact job they want, or sample many different kinds of jobs. The great part about being an employee here is that we really do everything! You might find yourself in a niche market and become an expert in it, or you might find that you like doing a bit of everything! Or maybe you do both.
Cons
Stantec's organizational structure is both wide and tall, with multiple overlaps of responsibility for specific groups or sections of the organization. This results in a ton of "middle managers", and can result in a paralysis of bureaucracy when looking to obtain approvals, or even to figure out who is the right person to give the approvals. With the constant growth through acquisitions, there are often pockets of Stantec that have very different office cultures than the official Company-stated values. These usually take several years to integrate, and sometimes get forgotten if the progress takes too long. To be fair, I find that this issue is starting to be looked into and mitigated through our Inclusion & Diversity programs. Again from an acquisition growth pattern, one struggle we constantly have is that we don't always have a standard way of doing things (example: CAD standards / training programs for specific software / on-boarding of new employees). Often new employees flounder a bit (especially young professionals just entering the work environment with less than 3 years experience) because we don't have a strong set of standards. Many groups within Stantec do things their way, which is a little different than any other group, and so it's rarely written down.