Hi there! I recently saw a job posted on Pembina.com for a position that I am interested in and qualified for. A friend of mine suggested to post on a few online venues one being thelayoff.com to get an honest review of the company before I submit anything. Wondering what are the positives and negatives at Pembina? Challenges? Struggles? Perks? Would you recommend working for the company? What is the "work" policy now? Office, home or hybrid? Thanks everyone and hope everyone is having a nice summer.
14 replies (most recent on top)
I agree with all the posts above that find Pembina a bad place to work. Spent 7-1/2 years there and finally had enough. In most cases, the incompetent and dishonest get promoted while doing a good job and performing well gets punished. There has been so much growth but nothing has been done to put processes and systems in place to manage the growth. Management couldn't give a cr-p about actually being managers and making sure workers have what they need to do their jobs - more concerned about not spending any money so they get bigger bonuses. This goes all the way up to the CEO. Externally the company looks great. Internally the wheels have come off. There are groups within the company attempting to build their own empires, by being totally unprofessional / dishonest / unethical by throwing anyone in their way under the bus. And management supports this. I've been in this industry as a quality specialist for over 30 years, seen some big messes, but nothing like this. Thankfully I quit, had enough of the BS.
I’m just wondering if the people complaining about working unpaid OT are salaried employees or hourly. If you are salaried, we’ll I would think that’s just part of it. Foremen and supervisors do it all the time because that’s just part of the job. If you are hourly and working without charging time we’ll then you are probably the one to blame.
Cruel, horrific, unethical, but most importantly some of those items listed below are ILLEGAL. The most awful thing is that many staff at Pembina never speak up about of these things because that will potentially make you are marked person. Questioning the motivation or agenda of managers and not appearing like a team player.. and perhaps receiving further retribution from upper management/HR. Heck, I wouldn't even trust or be comfortable reporting this stuff to the Integrity Hotline. I hope whoever posted this topic looks elsewhere. Pembina isn't worth your time or anyones time. Ignore everything you read about how inclusive this company is or how much of a "family" we are.
Apologies for the length of this post but here is a copy/paste from the link someone posted below below about Pembina. Ask yourself if you would want to be associated with a company like this that acts like this. Some of it is cruel and horrific:
1) HR shaming a woman for going on maternity leave
2) Team giving the cold shoulder and shaming a woman for getting pregnant
3) A manager telling their team that a male within the group who requested to take paternity leave would now be passed over for all future promotions
4) An internal debate within a BU about hiring a black man for a managerial role
5) Guilting employees for taking disability leave and then laying them off
6) Top-down culture that demands 10s of hours of weekly unpaid overtime
7) Questionable conduct within Human Resources
8) Cronyism with internal promotions and external hires. Want to be hired at Pembina? Go drink or play golf with a Pembina manager. Competence and experience not required
9) Nepotism with summer student hires
10) Internal culture that is based on vindictiveness and fear. Never question the cult. Fall in line soldiers and obey your masters and sycophant HR
11) A culture where the abuse of alcohol is not only tolerated but celebrated
12) Managers coming to work drunk or severely hungover and being celebrated and promoted. The way all the tight groups stay together or at least survive layoffs because of cliques. Usually cemented by lengthily drinking binges. When does the work get done? Doesn’t seem to matter. Invoices and expenses going way over on projects and VP questioning the li---r bills but somehow there are never consequences for these people. Instead: promotions and rewards.
Also the top heavy nature of every team. A manager who only has two people report into him. And probably taking all the credit for their work.
13) Take it for what it's worth. When I had my severance package reviewed by a lawyer, she told me that she knew a couple of fellow lawyers at Pembina. One thing she mentioned is that Pembina tries to never layoff people on an individual basis, and prefers to if possible let things playout with a resignation vs. a package. She said that money is not really a concern but instead it's a mental thing with the company not wanting to set a precedent where employees believe they can just be packaged out. Keeping employees in line. Can't comment on the tactics used from within but the story below sounds pretty brutal. Hope she is well.
14) I'll add something that still makes me angry to this day. I was hired at Pembina in 2014 and sometime in 2015 there was a female on our team in her late twenties who was going through an obvious challenging time with her mental health and was struggling. It was heartbreaking seeing it take place from the sidelines, and I genuinely wondered if she would even be in the office the next day or if she took her own life. I remember seeing our HR business partner visit the office of our manager to obviously discuss options about the situation. A day or two later after that visit, the manager took her office away, assigned it to someone else, and increased her workload and field visits... to obviously make her resign and rid the company of any liability. Another note to the story: This is the same team that debated hiring a black man to replace said manager. It's all true and disgusting.
15) Pembina is the only company I worked for in my career where if a quality person and decent performer accepted a position at another company, we didn't openly celebrate them or look inward as to why they left. As soon as the person had one foot out the door, they were criticized and their contributions minimized. It was serious Stockholm syndrome. People need to accept that these cultural issues are tolerated from the top down and there isn't anyone high level in the executive "pipeline" under Mick who have an appetite for changing these things. As long paycheques are cashed and the shareholder is looked after, who cares. I'm curious so see how far behind the eight ball Pembina will be in 5 years.
16) Alright, here is another terrible one for the list. When all of the Covid stuff kicked off and we started to work from home, a former colleague of mine started to experience symptoms of the virus. The team was texting this person checking in but when they talked to management, the only thing they were asked was "who were you last in contact with at the office" and "let us know when you are able to get back to work". Nothing about their health. The manager told them that HR and the company "nurse" would reach out to them to check-in but that never happened. Was chatting with them a few months ago and they said that after that went down, they had their resume open on one screen while working, and that Pembina paid for them to find another job. The response was very Pembina-like.
17) Have you noticed that the same managers and supervisors will always be in management positions. None of the old managers and their friends get fired. They just shuffle them in different positions, simply because it is convenient to protect them and keep their friends working at Pembina. Many of them have no idea about what they are doing in those positions, but they are friends of the powerful old guys. Later, top management is asking why the projects fail. Well, managers and supervisors are in those positions because of the networking and not their own merit.
18) Surprised no one mentioned how they treated their former employees during the layoffs last year. They paid out the bare minimum in staff who gave everything to the company (and bought into the Pembina culture). The company even played hardball with 20 year + employees over peanuts. Pembina also decided to update the severance schedule document mere days after sending it out requiring former staff to obtain a signed letter from their bank if their wanted severance monies to be deposited to an RRSP..... During a global pandemic when almost everything was closed. It then took them over a month to deposit the funds. I know a few people who couldn't get that signed letter and had to take a cash payout and get hammered even more with taxes. Pembina also only gave former employees two weeks of additional benefit coverage during a global pandemic and told everyone to use up as much as they could. It was sad to think of any staff who themselves or their dependents had serious health issues and were so callously cut off. It was all another kick the by a classless organization.
"Pembina is a good company..." seriously laughing my a-s off. It is if you like working in a toxic environment, where leaders have very little leadership experience, where employees are not trusted, where you can't climb the corporate ladder unless you want to manage people, where resourcing is never a consideration while workload increases, etc. Loyalty and morale is extremely low. I have been in the industry for a number of years and this is by far the worst place I have ever worked. Pembina is not a progressive company and is extremely slow to change. Everyone single person I have talked to is currently looking for other work including myself and I would personally not recommend working here.
Pembina does not support a flexible work from home schedule unfortunately. Many people have asked about this and we keep getting told not happening. I truly hope at some point this will be reconsidered. There are currently many changes happening throughout the company. I know Supply Chain is going through a "transformation". Many things are uncertain at the moment, and stress level has been quite high for months. I can't say I know many people that are content and happy. It's hard to tune out all the "noise". I will add there are many people in management roles that are not qualified and of course don't listen to their employees. Good luck on your decision. Thought I'd give an honest opinion.
Gotta love the old school work/culture mentality with some of these old timers still employed at our company. B-ms in seats, supervised like children, and micromanaged. Very 80s and screaming insecurity. I can't say anyone on our team has slept in, clocked out early without good reason, or had questionable access to Teams throughout this entire pandemic (perhaps only your group). It is obvious that certain internal stakeholders we communicate to are drinking alcohol and using ca--abis during workdays which is unfortunate. Pre-pandemic, I put would work my 9-10 hours days in the office and sometimes continue at home that night. Guess what? I'm putting in MORE hours while working from home and am suddenly now always on call due to peoples staggered work schedules. If I turn everything down, suddenly I'm now not a team player. If I don't have any meetings or things that need urgent attention, again guess what? I'm cutting my lawn in the afternoon, shovelling snow, running a quick errand, and or taking the dogs for a walk. How may people in the office waste time taking smoke breaks, coffee breaks, long lunches downtown with drinks, or in useless meetings? If you can't trust your staff to execute their duties and not be glued to their screens 8 hours a day, YOU are the problem and have likely hired the wrong people. Attitudes like yours will bite this company in the rear with future hires. I bet you have the teams app open on separate screen with a stopwatch nearby timing when folks are away from their laptop. Happy my boss gets it.
Work from work means you dont work from home. You go to the office or field and don’t sleep in, quit early, or have mysterious “Teams” problems when your supervisor is trying to get ahold of you. Cutting your grass at 2pm on a Tuesday while Pembina pays you handsomely should not be an option.
Accusing me of drinking as I posted that? Clueless. Typical. Probably the same clown spreading the info on how to fu-k the system with a doctors note. Makes me sick.
To the original poster with the sincere question: you will find people like this and you will find dedicated people proud to work for Pembina. There are more proud/dedicated people than the latter.
What is a "work from work company"? Are you honestly drunk at 7pm when you posted that? Typical Pembina.
I am three seasons in at Pembina and have served for a number of upstream and midstream companies throughout my engineering career in Calgary. The comment below about who you will be reporting to is accurate but not just limited to Pembina. If you proceed with your application, I hope you land with a group who are competent, genuine, and with a manager who can lead and inspire. Arriving from another midstream company, I was shocked at the lack of oversight and vision with some of our systems and processes in Calgary. It was like stepping back into the early 2000s. Penny pincher culture. If you are hungry and want to influence positive change, be prepared to be bogged down by internal bureaucracy, silo mentality, and the "if it ain't broke. don't fix it." message sent from higher headquarters. Compared to the other firms I have served at, the Pembina culture tends to lean on the conservative side, so without a site like this that is brutally honest and opens wounds, you won't get an accurate view into the company culture and its actions compared the other employment websites. Many of my colleagues are disciples drinking the juice.
If you already haven't already, I would urge you to read all the threads on this site and deduce if the company is a right fit for you. This thread is particularly troubling and sadly accurate: https://www.thelayoff.com/t/19Vba2xu
Pembina is a good and honest employer with some small flaws
Pembina has issues but not more than other companies in the same industry. I am a 35 year old veteran of the industry and I've done consulting projects for many of our competitors. I'd say we are better than average. I think your experience here will really depend on who you report to and how you are aligned - experience here differes. However, things are good here in general and I think you'll have hard time finding something that will be better.
Good luck.
Pembina is a good company, don’t listen to the cry babies and whiners. No company is perfect. It’s a high performing company that expects high performance from employees.
They are a work from work company.
Not sure what position you are applying for, but you will typically get back what you give. If you have any previous oil industry experience you will probably find Pembina to be a better company than the others you have worked for.