Pros
Being early on in my career, Smiling Mind was an excellent experience where I was given a lot of opportunities for skill and knowledge development across a wide variety of projects. I experienced a real felt sense of support and care within the team, especially during all of the lockdowns and working from home. I really enjoyed the flexible working arrangements, daily mindfulness activities (qi gong, meditations, yoga etc.) and agile approach to product development. The focus on wellbeing and connectedness during my time was a real stand out for me. Creativity, agility and learning was really encouraged, and I found the team to work really hard to foster a safe, welcoming and productive workplace. There were very exciting conversations happening around accessibility, diversity and inclusion, and next steps forward as an organisation. I had the best manager and mentor in my role here, who was incredibly supportive and invested in my growth and development. I worked in two very passionate and hard working teams, who always supported each other and were kind, warm people. It is a very exciting growth period at Smiling Mind, and I would recommend this organisation to anyone interested!
Cons
Smiling Mind is undergoing a big growth period, so things do move very fast and often with tight timelines. It is often a matter of wanting to do everything because of the potential to positively impact stakeholders, yet not always being able to. Having such a close connection with the mission of Smiling Mind, and the impact that the work we were doing made this much more manageable knowing it would benefit others. Being a not-for-profit, there wasn't the same linear career progression as you may find in corporate, but the salary packaging and leave-plus policy is a really great benefit!