CDP reviews

Yes, the wages aren't great. But that's offset (at the start at least) by the pros of working here. Despite being champions of transparency in the business world, this clearly does not apply internally. The organisation appears unwilling to communicate to staff information about pay grades and promotions. Annual pay rises hover around the 1 - 2% mark, and 4% if you've performed well. It advertises a 10% annual bonus scheme, but this is rarely met. The other con is that because it is a successful and growing organisation, working there can sometimes feel a bit chaotic. There is some truth in what the very negative review below said about CDP being involved in too many side projects, and sometimes it can seem like it's losing sight of its end goals/bigger picture. Maybe management are on top of this. But what this means for most employees is that you will be doing a ton of work in a frenzied manner. There is a lot of obvious burnout as a consequence. And yes, there is a lot of low-level sexism visible here. To pretend otherwise is just naive. Many men, and indeed some women, who work here will brush this off with the comment that there is apparent gender balance. But that ignores the everyday sexism staff experience here. The organisation would go a long way if it genuinely listened to and learned from the experiences of its staff rather than having (mostly male) management tell employees that what they experienced can't be true because they (the man) haven't experienced it. No organisation has got gender equality or diversity/representation right. It's sad that this is the case in 2017. But the sadder truth is that it will continue to be the case for many decades to come if an organisation like CDP can't even be bothered to engage on this issue at a very basic level.

In terms of cons, none really. It has to be acknowledged that CDP has grown beyond that magic number of 150 employees which means operational change is required. This has been acknowledged and the organisation is about to roll out a programme of change to address many of the points raised in previous posters comments. So they have listened and are aiming to do something about it, the poster would know this if they had been here for 12 months. This will create fundamental challenges to the management team and challenge some of the politics that exists (show me an org where it doesn’t). The organisation does lack a lot of internal structure and key operational controls to deliver its work, but that is coming too. There has also been an acknowledgement that there isn’t enough management experience or formalised structures for management. The organisation has been investing in this over the last 18 months and bringing in some very experienced people into senior roles. Obviously there is a time lag to seeing the whole benefits of this, especially in an organisation whose model doesn’t allow for the most efficient deployment of these skills and experience but I feel the organisation and its new hires should be measured when this has come together in the next 12 months. It is not the most dysfunctional organisation out there, not by a country mile. The data isn’t abysmal as it is being used by some big players with little complaint. The salaries aren’t low for the non-profit sector. I have not witnessed any low level sexism, the organisation has a very healthy level of gender balance at all levels.