Could Be A Good Company - Anonymous employee SRF Consulting Group Employee Review

While receiving feedback such as yours is difficult, we appreciate the opportunity to be able to respond to your review. We take your feedback seriously and as such want to offer you our perspective on the concerns you raised. Your first concern, inter-department communication, is something that we agree is a critical component to project success. I can gather by your comments that you must not have had a positive experience with respect project communication. Typically, our teams hold regular meetings to discuss project changes and impacts to already completed work and if necessary work with our clients to address extra work issues. Sometimes, our teams encounter complex changes that are unpredictable and out of our control. When these changes occur, our goal is to address and communicate them quickly and address them efficiently. While we can’t say we’ve never had an issue with communicating a change, we do have processes in place to ensure that communication happens often and as early as possible. SRF has a high number of repeat clients; we have this because we deliver a great product, we deliver it on time and we meet budget expectations. As a company, we manage over 500 projects a year and of these there are very few with significant budget issues. Regarding technology updates, SRF has undertaken major changes to its civil platforms within the last couple of years. These changes have included shifts to the most advanced and up-to-date software including “Open Roads” and “Concept Station”. We have also upgraded all our networks and are in the process of converting systems to the most advanced Virtual Desktop Integration (VDI), which will give greater capability and flexibility to all staff. These types of changes do challenge staff as projects often cross multiple platforms due to the fact that projects are in different stages of development. Your perception of lack of respect for employees at SRF was troubling to read. Without employees, there is no SRF. We try to give employees a voice in our processes through a variety of ways; holding meetings that give employees access to leadership, incorporating a staff-led engagement and retention committee, and issuing engagement surveys where we require managers to incorporate changes /goals based on employee survey responses. In addition, we try to also build relationships between staff through numerous social events and outings as well as sponsorship of numerous teams in a variety of sports/activities. While we can’t involve all employees in every decision, we do incorporate employee feedback regularly. To your example of the changes to the 2019 benefits, I agree the initial communication could have been better. However, we did listen to feedback from our employees on the initial benefit changes and made further refinements to our benefits to address key concerns. While we are proud that our benefit offerings are some of the best in the industry, we understand that employee input is an important part of the benefit planning process. We are committed to considering that input as we plan any future changes. Finally, I’d like to speak to your concern around diversity at our organization. Our goal is to have our staff reflect the diversity in the communities in which we serve. While this goal is challenging because there can be a lack of diversity in the candidates applying, we are committed to increasing diversity at SRF. With that in mind, we have formed a Diversity and Inclusion Committee focused on hiring and retaining a diverse array of employees. I am proud of the fact that SRF has two women on our Board of Directors and two women on our Executive Team. I am also proud to say that this past year we promoted the greatest number of women to leadership roles than we have in the history of the company; the female promotions outnumbered those given to men. We’re excited about the progress we’ve made, but recognize more work needs to be done. I invite you to reach out to me should you wish to speak through any of these topics further. Dave Montebello