Pros
- You will likely develop quickly due to being thrown into high-pressure situations but this is driven by personal resilience, not structured support.
- Most colleagues aim to support each other and make day-to-day life more manageable, but many are also overwhelmed by unrealistic workloads.
- Everyone leaves at 5pm and you aren't encouraged to stay, shift is 8-5 though instead of standard 9-5.
Cons
- High performers are rewarded with additional responsibilities, not compensation, advancement or even acknowledgement.
- Exceeding expectations results in being perceived as having excess capacity, not value.
- Salary for office staff is significantly below market standards considering the scope of responsibilities.
- The IT system Phoenix is outdated, unreliable and painfully slow. Despite repeated reports, no permanent fixes are made, reducing daily productivity by a significant margin.
- Senior leadership exhibits erratic and at times aggressive behaviour, including physical outbursts. While there may be charitable intentions towards external companies operating for the greater good, internal mistakes and missed (often unrealistic) targets are viewed as personal attacks, creating a tense environment and a fear culture as you cannot always be truly honest about operational challenges as it will put you at risk of an outburst, regardless of if it is your fault or not.
- There is a clear disconnect between senior leadership and day to day operations. Poor strategic decisions and a lack of understanding of team needs are common.
- Advancements are heavily influenced by internal politics. The merit of your work is rarely considered in your progression.
- Staff turnover is extremely high. Jokes about long term employees being anomalies are common and reflect a severe cultural problem.
