intern

engineer

director

assistant

senior engineer

Consumers Energy

If you're not a union employee, you don't want to work here anymore. The compensation and benefits are good, but is not worth the stress. There are two levels here--upper level management or the disposables. Lower level employees are not being replaced as they move on to other positions due to constant budget cuts and the employees who are left are overloaded and unsupported. Workloads have grown exponentially while availability of overtime has been taken away outside of storm activity. Upper level managers are never let go for being ineffective--they are only demoted at very worst into other management positions the hourly employees work very hard to be considered for. It has become very difficult to have any upward mobility here as budgets and positions are constantly cut. I have interviewed for and been offered four separate promotions in just under six years that were then taken back because of budget cuts after waiting on HR for over a month to close the deal. What once used to be hallways full of smiling and proud employees has been reduced to heads being down and the suffocating feeling of defeat. The company is also really pushing everyone to submit anonymous complaints to the Compliance department for anything they believe is unethical. Any reports made are intensely investigated and officers are trained to assume fault from the beginning of the process until the end. So we now have a culture where people with personal grudges are turning each other in left and right with ridiculous allegations. If you're not the first to turn the other person in, you have absolutely no backing, and anything you say to defend yourself--facts or not--is only regarded to as retaliation. 
Years ago, this was an amazing place to work, but all the great things you might hear about us now are for publicity only. This place was my dream as a child--now I feel like I am jeopardizing my integrity just by staying here.

Micromanaged on the daily. Disconnect from management to actual workers. Feel like you are on your own and things come back to being your fault if there are mistakes. Training apppears to be non-existent/ fend for yourself.

People say it’s a place to retire from, I do not see it within the CEM department. Cannot take a day off without having someone cover. They offer you vacation, but you are hesitant to take it because we are so swamped that the person “covering” is often overloaded with their own duties, leaving you a mess to come back to. 

We wear more hats than we should, often taking the brunt of issues caused by others and facing angry customers with it.

Work life balance is  constantly being preached, but with the workload we have it is nearly impossible and is a fading pipe dream. Constantly being told by upper management that “there are challenges and we are working on it.”  Headcount to territory size is incredibly disproportioned..

Metrics and processes are constantly changing for what appears to be the worst. Requested changes from ground level employees are often ignored and/or interpreted differently by management. New programs are instilled with very little training (1.5 days), and you are given 3 weeks to use it until you are judged on it (mind you, it is partially finished product with lots of bugs).  Other departments staff up, and appear to be responsible for less work. People are looking to leave ASAP.   

Call-center feel for a process driven giant that tries to cookie cutter every job which is not possible for what we do. We don’t make widgets. Management consist of mainly ex-automotive industry cronies that try to lean the place out when they have no idea how this giant actually works.

I’ve been working at this company for about 8 years. The CEO changed in 2020, unfortunately and things have taken a nosedive, most notably this past year. It’s a very my way or the high way mentality. Trust me, I’ve submitted over 100 applications to other companies so far this year with no luck. I’m trying to take the highway and I’m not the only one. This year employee were forced back into the office after some had been hired out of state or had moved out of state because they were told they could, and they were basically SOL. They got a severance package. They also restructured the job and pay structure this year and it’s been a disaster. I’ve yet to meet an employee who has benefited from the change. I lost out on several raises, and am also SOL. Nearly 100% of the compensation department has left. We’ve had a net loss of 600 employees this year, and the work didn’t go anywhere. Everyone is feeling it. And then recently the company announced it was rolling back sick leave/parental leave benefits that were best in class. It was one of the last good things going for this company. The new CEO is driving the company culture into the ground. And doing it in the name of caring for customers and coworkers. The corporate gaslighting is exhausting. And the rest of the VPs just seem to go along with it. The corporate lingo is getting old. I’ve lost a lot of respect for management this year. It’s a darn shame because this used to be a really good company to work for. Caring used to be one of our corporate values. Watching the ceo and leadership on corporate conversations laughing and joking like everything is fine and denying the utter disconnect between them and the rest of the company was really telling. The lack of empathy is crystal clear. 

Micro managed with a "timer" on every call and an "overseer" rather than any kind of real management support. In the call center you are expected to deal with gas emergency calls with 100% accuracy every time, in essence a gas "911", but the stress isn't rewarded by any decent pay. There is a constant push to sell their Appliance Service Plans, which is given more time resources than dealing with the actual issues that the customers are calling about! Try selling a plan to someone who is calling as they are $3000 behind and are going to be shut off! The supervisors never want to deal with any customer complaints, preferring the CSRs to get rid of difficult callers by promising callbacks by higher level CSRs. You are also expected to be on call during bad weather and they actually measure how far away you live and time the inbound journey to make sure you aren't dragging your feet! The call volume is so high, with not enough CSRs, that there can be literally tens, if not hundreds, of people waiting on hold, so there is no break between calls to make notes on accounts. If you go "offline" for any long period to deal with a complex issue, you are told off for not taking calls. I would not recommend this environment for anyone but the most hardy and "laid back" CSR. It may of changed now, but given my experience of management, I doubt it. I'd rather dig ditches than work there again.

 The job description and the expectations of the job will grow. One year your production meets standards. The next...expecatations grow as management moves the goal posts out further and you are let go because you no longer meeting the new guidelines. 
They push all woke agenda's to the point of adherance or the door. 
Conservative employees are now moving to safer enviroments or jobs that will allow them to hide from management within the company and many are let go based on any  little thing the company can find to get rid of you. 
They advertise...Hometown Service....I guess their hometown was less ethical than mine. 
I felt like I was selling my soul the longer I worked there. Acting like I believed in the wokeness just to keep my job. My team had great co workers on it but it wouldn't be wise to go beyond that with your voice. 
When I left and since I left...I have spoken to others and how it is now a place to work, keep your head down and keep silent. All they want to hear is praise for all of thier wokeness agenda policy enforcement. 
The upper management cries how they need to save money or make cuts yet the VP's get outragious bonuses and the rest get nothing. 
Workload increases, stress increases, expectations increases but your pay will not or minimal at best.  
Advancement is unlikely unless you are a minority  that falls into thier cultural agenda. Qaulifications do not matter when the competition is a minority member. 



Typically on a daily basis I would handle incoming calls from customers regarding their utility bills. The issues ranged from payment arrangements, billing concerns, moving in or out of a new home. We also received calls regard appliance repairs, as we sold customers an appliance repair service. I would handle roughly 50-60 calls in a day and also for about a quarter of the day I would be doing administrative tasks i.e. data input. I would also be asked to fill in as a temporary manager when our management would have meetings. I learned quite a few things working there and I now pride myself on having a good work ethic and strong communication skills. I learned how to follow and also lead. The management at Consumers Energy was above average we had great team leaders, but we also had some that truly weren't qualified to do their job on a daily basis. The people that I worked with were all very nice and we were always professional in the workplace. The hardest part of the job was really the hours we were at a mandatory 60 hour work week with forced overtime based on seniority. I think the best part of the job was just the benefits that they provided, we would sell the appliance repair program and receive quite a bit of commission. The salaries that they paid were on par with that type of work and we received great healthcare.

This used to be a great place to work, if you get the right management over you it helps. Most management now are heavy-handed micro managers emphasizing only what’s done wrong to the point of your not being able to even do your job. What’s done right or exceptionally well is overlooked, diminished and taken for granted. Raises and praise are reserved only for the new hires to keep them happy and to keep them from leaving. The smart ones see through this and leave anyway. This is now a mostly a window dressing, virtue signaling, politically correct company. If that fits your ambitions and personality, this is just the place for you. If you just want to dress up your resume, get hired, put your time in (briefly) and keep moving on to better things. Most of the managers are afraid of those above them all the way up through upper management. This is a company that used to be driven by doing right by everyone inside and outside the company from the top down but is now a dog being wagged by the whims of its Wall Street tail. This company shares its “values” and operating ethos with the likes of GM, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, etc. The Golden Rule is a completely foreign concept here. Their rule is “trust no one and do to others BEFORE they see what’s coming”.

- Pay is surprisingly high. Perhaps because they milk their customer for the dough as they monopolize the market. 
- Customers doesn't have any alternative option to get service as they are the sole service provider in the region
- Company tend to purchase capital acquisitions via sole source versus competitive bidding as they tend to cut corners which is a product of poor project planning and real management skills.
- Company politics is unusually high as compared to a typical company of the same size or scale impeding true progress and innovation. 
- People get promoted based on who you know and not what you know. This year a number of promotions were made because either you're a "YES" man or your manager is your friend outside the office.
- Thus, some managers and supervisors are incompetent as they have zero job experience on the matter. 
- One group in IT is more of a liability than an asset as they seemed to not know what they are doing. Case in point is hiring/spending almost 3/4 of million $$$'s in doing the same audit three times by two  different audit companies yielding the same results from the beginning.
- there are few good groups and management leaders in the company unfortunately bad eggs outnumber the good ones and they are pulling this company down.

Probably a good company to work for if you are a full time direct hire employee.  But IT Contractors are basically treated like 2nd class citizens.  Everything from you are only allowed to park on the roof of the parking garage, to being excluded from team lunches, and other office related events.  Contractors are not even allowed to participate in Take Your Child To Work Day - an event that costs the company nothing but we cannot participate.  But they will send out the sign-up e-mail to all employees.   Let you sign up, then politely notify you that since you are a Contractor you are not allowed to participate.

One day last winter this happened to me twice.  There was an employee standing at the door at the end of the day handing out free snow scrapers.   He put one in my hand, saw my Contractor badge, and immediately pulled back the scraper saying sorry you cannot have one.  This happened to me two days in a row.  Come on people get your act together and find a better way to distribute items that you want only employees to have.  Maybe a staff meeting or other meeting where Contractors are regularly excluded anyways would have been a better choice.

A typical day at Consumers Energy consisted of a lot of customer service.  I set up payment arrangements and helped people find help with different agencies.  I processed requests for people to turn on and off both gas and electric service throughout Michigan's lower peninsula.  I took monthly meter readings and I helped people to report gas and emergency services, that is just to name a few of the different things that I helped people with on a day-to-day basis, both over the phone and on the web.  I worked over 60 hours each and every week for six years.  The number of hours worked was often forced upon me and it became a bit much.  The management was extremely strict and due to the behavior and poor performance of representatives, there was a lot of micro-managing in the call center.  It did not bother me as I always exceeded in my monthly stats.  The hardest part of the job would have to be the long hours during thunder storms to be available to respond to power outages and other electric emergencies.  The most enjoyable part of the job was being able to help people find an option that works for them to be able to keep their utility service on.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Intern 7 salaries reported	$22.86 per hour
Engineer 5 salaries reported	$112,600 per year
Director 6 salaries reported	$172,500 per year
Assistant 3 salaries reported	$20.17 per hour
Senior engineer 4 salaries reported	$109,925 per year

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