Great place to work - Deputy Director Lutheran World Relief Employee Review

The agency is merging with IMA World Health and it's a period of dynamic change. This brings with it uncertainty and some understandable nervousness, but in general it's an exciting place to work. Creative work being done in agriculture value chains (LWR is an expert in coffee and cocoa), in Technologies for Development; interesting opportunities for expansion into Middle East. Colleagues are highly intelligent, mission-oriented, and collaborative.

Merger is creating some tensions, which are understandable. There is a lot of work added to employees as organization seeks to bring together policies, systems, structures, culture etc across two organizations. There is also lots of pressure to grow and to bring in money. So, lots of work--but at least you won't be bored and it can be exciting being part of significant change. That said, for junior staff, there are not a lot of opportunities for promotion within the agency due to its size.

Pros and cons really dependent on specific position and who your manager is - the CEO and his team don't do much to try and influence org culture and there isn't much to the high-level org strategy so it's a bit of a mixed bag (for good or ill). Good benefits package (at least for now, that looks like it might be up for discussion soon). Better work-life balance than many competitors (again, depending on supervisor and position). Stable sources of non-restricted funding allow for some creativity and risk-taking although that mostly seems to be spent on CEO's particular projects of interests. Generally good quality of program work but nothing particularly innovative or groundbreaking especially given how much funding could be available for piloting new ideas.

Current push for growth mostly just feels like grabbing at more money some of the time. Haven't been particularly impressed by the CEO, who is pretty out of touch with staff. Occasional mishires happen (which happens anywhere), but the problem at LWR is they can't rip off the band-aid, acknowledge a mishire, and deal with the problem so there have been issues with incompetent people hanging around in jobs way too long. Smaller org, so often few opportunities for advancement.