Open Data Institute Reviews

Even though there's much room to learn new skills and do new things, there isn't much of an opportunity to climb up the ladder, earn more money and get more recognition. There's no KPIs and organisational structure is a bit of a mess, so if you want to be able to get a pay raise or your role reviewed you have to be friendly with someone in the leadership team to make it happen... which doesn't cater to introverts who find that difficult, or staff that don't interact often with leadership. Professional development is undervalued and consistently it is flagged by staff as something important but not taken seriously by leadership. Many people feel they have little guidance when it comes to growing professionally at the ODI. Team morale has also been very up and down, I think in some part as a reaction to this. The leadership team are well meaning and good people who are trying their hardest but I felt they often didn't listen to the team or wouldn't communicate their decisions very well. There has never been a definition about what things are or aren't open meaning that staff get frustrated when they're used to things being transparent and then something will happen behind closed doors with little explanation, inevitably leading to speculation which can turn into office gossip.

* No real discussion/scrutiny of possible red flags: eg in an 18-month period, the VP, Head of People, Head of Public Policy, and Head of BizDev all resigned without jobs to go to. Two of these post-holders were Black women. * Poor DEI: culture of unadvertised jobs - most frequently at senior levels, and mostly going to white men (sometimes to white women). Also risks groupthink at a leadership level and not engaging in constructive critical discussion (if the "real" currency is patronage). * Questionable practices: some senior managers intercepting email without consent or senders knowledge - this was reported to ICO. * High staff turnover creates operational drag and negatively impacts the staff team and external relationships. Eg one major 18month project changed project manager 7 times, several other teams have gone through 50%-100% staff churn in periods ranging from 24hrs to 12 months.