Vantaggi
As a fresher, this was a great place to learn. An organisation which was on its peak in the 2000s and managed to get some amazing infrastructure on ground. There are projects in almost every area and a lot to learn from the communities they work in. Some senior management staff and employees are kind hearted and have high morals, as opposed to the rest of the organisation and HR.
Svantaggi
They pride themselves on their culture in 'theory' or what they used to have, but honestly, it is very negative, dishonest, lacks trust, detrimental competition between teams and lacks empathy. The projects are not designed to achieve long term impact or success, rather to appeal to funders and donors. The work and research is very mediocre - primarily due to under-paid staff who are not motivated to perform to their highest ability, rather they are scared/threatened into working. Performance reviews are highly detrimental and negative, biased and subjective. The process looks like it is 'ideal' (something the HR proudly boasts) but there are so many biases included in the process that it looks like a pointless, stressful exercise. Performance reviews should reflective and helpful rather than scary and demotivating. There is a huge disconnect between the 'Delhi' team and 'field' teams. Ideas are cooked up in Delhi and sometimes forced down the field teams without taking into account how difficult the field conditions are. And finally, the morals and values of senior management are highly questionable. The way a few harassment cases were handled and sidelined shows how little the senior management cares about its employees and organisation's culture. Proven harassment cases were not discussed with the staff (rather told that the particular person left due to family reasons), guilty individuals have been re-hired in different positions (as consultants or on other locations) and there has been no discussion around sexual harassment apart from customary emails from HR.