Stated values and strong Christian identity wonderful, but beware the reality - Anonymous employee Tearfund Employee Review

Entirely new Executive team in last 18 months, has led to a massive (and it seems unrecognized) loss of institutional memory . Entirely white middle class ET - not really reflective of the audience being served in the work - downside is that beneficiary/ field team interests are not always that well understood or served by those at the top. Some new ET members bringing in culture/ values of previous organisations and these simply don't fit Tearfund. There is a degree of nepotism - husbands employing wives, parents managing their kids, people being promoted based on relationships rather than performance, inbreeding etc. Despite their being policies that state this is not allowed. What is allowed is less about policy and more about who you know and what you can get away with - or what is most convenient at any given time. It's a very political environment, surprisingly. I don't feel safe at work to express a dissenting opinion, however valid, because it could seriously jeopardize my prospects/ advancement. There are not that many opportunities for career progression. Some middle management have been in post of 20 years or more - and there are strong cliques of people who have worked together for years banded together to ensure that their interests and decisions are protected. Nice when you are inside one of these, not so healthy when you are not. The longer you are around, the more tempting it is to allow yourself to get drawn into this way of surviving in Tearfund. Not much performance management. Poorly performing employees are comfortably allowed to carry on as they are. There is also no reward or recognition for excellence or achievement in your role - so over time this serves as a performance disincentive. Siloed, competitive teams makes getting cross team projects difficult to get done. A serious breakdown in communication, relationship, understanding of common objectives etc. between HQ in London and the field teams, often making work objectives impossible to achieve. Over seven years and in 4 different teams, I have been involved in more than 12 investigations of employee gross misconduct or fraud - for a Christian organisation that employs only Christians, this is a poor show. (and I'm not in an audit or HR role). Values often don't work themselves out in behavior and relationships. Prides itself on being a highly relational environment but in reality this has not been my experience. There are a handful of really excellent middle managers but the vast majority are old fashioned in their leadership approach, hierarchical and have been in roles too long with little to no accountability. They don't like innovation, are happy to maintain the status quo and often prioritise protecting themselves and their patch over doing what is right for the people we serve. Since I have been around the organisation has undergone three major change processes - there is a real struggle around working out what the organisation's niche is and how best to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in that. A lot of resource wastage through poor decision making and processes. Recent building renovation to improve heating system has resulted in a poorly functioning AC system and a work environment that is not suitable for all the functions needed by employees. Feedback or change requests are met with silence or hostility from facilities. It becomes energy sapping to constantly complain so most employees learn to live with a lot of unnecessary frustrations and discomforts in the working environment. There is a high degree of lip service paid to employee engagement - but at the end of the day the perception among employees is that management have their own agenda and that is what they carry out. Some salaries are paid well above the odds compared to other similar sized charities and others way under. There is little pay parity among peers in similar roles. Experience/ skill and performance have no bearing on the level of pay/ the reward that are offered. Tearfund is trying to be too many different things. It's Christian identity lends itself well to its approach to working with the local church to transform communities. But its humanitarian teams have slowly lost their edge over the last few years and have become slow, poorly staffed with a high degree of turnover, unable to achieve scale and therefore do not provide value for money and in many instanced do not succeed in targeting the most vulnerable. There seems to be a reticence on the part of HQ management tackle this head on and get it right. There is little difference in the way Tearfund handles supporter money and the way other non Christian NGOs do - we don't have a higher degree of transparency or ethics in this area, despite patting ourselves on the backs that we are operating on a higher moral plain. The reality is that we just are not that different to the rest of the pack. Glassdoor states that Matthew Frost is the CEO - he's not anymore. The current CEO is Nigel Harris, that is who I have rated here.