Acasus Reviews

3.5

74% would recommend to a friend

(71 total reviews)

Fenton Whelan

83% approve of CEO

58% positive business outlook

Acasus has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 71 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Acasus employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Management and consulting industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

71 reviews
2.0
27 Nov 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Pays fairly well, perhaps the highest paying entry level job in Pakistan. Good emphasis on the consulting toolkit and the company pushes you to acquire skills such as making excellent slides and stakeholder management. Workload is more than a typical 9 to 5 but for the salary they offer, it's not so bad. Exists in countries where a lot of development work can be done and they have done really good work in the past. Lots of travel and exposure to people from different sectors (locally as well as globally). Frequent retreats/trainings add a good flavour too. Work hard, party hard. Untouched by global macroeconomic issues. Neither will recession affect the company nor will any calamity. In fact, when the world is not doing so well, the donor organisations who fund acasus will pool in more money for more projects.

Cons

The company has a poor retention rate. Most people do not stick around for the first two years. Hence, they don't have resources who are qualified enough to lead junior/entry level resources. The company is also in an existential crisis where they juggle between being a consulting firm, a NGO (like WHO, BMGF), or a government organisation due to the nature of their relationships with governments (the only clients). The scope of projects are undefined and projects do not have clear deliverables or timelines. The job requires a "yes sir" attitude towards government officials and the scope of the project is ever changing, depending on who is in power in the government at that time. Since the organisation is so focussed on making itself irreplacable for governments, we often have to do work that we know has no impact but it is important to either please the government stakeholders (mainly) or the donors who fund the project (BMGF, WB, GAVI) - and this can be extremely frustrating. Lastly, the security policies are way too extreme. We have been given macbooks and iphones but they are extensively monitored (every click on the laptop is being monitored and stored in data logs). There is limited functionality on work devices and we often have to do things manually (highly inefficient) just because our internal application store does not support a software needed to perform the task. Due to the security policies, the place feels like a prison sometimes, ngl.

avatar
Acasus Response
1y
Thank you for your honest feedback – we appreciate both the pros and cons, as well as your advice for us to improve. You are right in acknowledging that as a young and fast growing consultancy, it is difficult for us to grow coaching capacity at the same pace. We have been further investing in our coaching and development training, to enable more of our team members to take up these roles successfully. At the same time, we have been recruiting experienced project managers from outside the consultancy. We believe these steps will continue to improve the experience for our teams.
1.0
21 Mar 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Compensation is good for the development sector - Some interesting and impactful work, though a lot of it is meaningless drudgery to appease clients.

Cons

Career Progression & Recruitment Issues - No clear pathway for advancement beyond the Project Manager level. - During the recruitment process, they made misleading promises about promotions to non-existent grades. If you ask about promotions, you will be told that the only thing that matters is impact, as if the two things are mutually exclusive. - There is a lack of learning and development at PM-level - there are very few good people at management-level to learn from. - At the Associate-level, there is a lack of coaching and support due to a shortage of PMs. Toxic Leadership & Culture - Leadership is immature, biased, and gossipy, and reacts emotionally to any perceived criticism. - HR is patronizing, and exists solely to protect management. Imposes the worst of management, such as pressuring people to work on weekends under the guise of ‘flexibility’. There are no standardized HR processes to lodge complaints. - Cult-like, delusional belief in impact, despite merely being a supply chain optimization company, and ‘impact’ is used as a substitute for professional systems and processes. Lack of Professionalism & Unfair Practices - Basic processes are ignored, leading to inefficiencies. - High turnover due to the toxic culture and unnecessarily long hours. - Senior members of the team use their positions to create unfair advantages for certain employees. Unreasonable Work Expectations - Pressure to work long hours and weekends. - Internal meetings, training, and interviews are scheduled on weekends with the expectation that employees will attend. - No regard for work-life balance—if you push back, you are told that this is not the place for you.

5.0
26 Nov 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- some of the smartest and most effective senior management I've ever seen - inspirational junior employees - very impactful projects with senior leaders in government - lots of responsibility to develop projects and stakeholder relationships

Cons

- expect standard consulting hours; not an 'easy option' - heavy travel schedule, typically based in country full-time

Viewing 1 - 3 of 71 Reviews

Glassdoor has 73 Acasus reviews submitted anonymously by Acasus employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Acasus is right for you.