Pros
JustGiving concentrate heavily on their values which are held in high regard and emphasised in the new modern offices. The values try to get the best out of people by encouraging independent thought, experimentation and good ethical foundations. The answer to why someone is doing something is never ‘because that’s the way it’s always been done’. This approach allows a lot of people to flourish and means that putting forward new ideas, however out there they are, can be voiced without embarrassment. Strong relationships between individuals regardless of what team they work in is encouraged and results in people helping each other out all the time which makes the organisation more cohesive than a company with segmented departments. Although the structure isn’t completely flat nobody is considered to be insignificant or unvalued regardless of their pay grade. A strong emphasis of the company’s approach is, like Google’s mantra ‘don’t be evil, is to try to do the right thing by all the stakeholders be they employee, charity, donor or investor which makes it a great place to work knowing that nobody is being shafted by the actions of your employer. JustGiving has grown a lot in the past few years which has its own inevitable difficulties but more importantly makes the company a really exciting place to work and brings new challenges all the time. It’s unlikely that anyone working at JustGiving would spend much time getting bored! The company isn’t afraid to invest where necessary and opportunities for training and progression seem to be there for employees if they want it.
Cons
When an organisation grows it can be very exciting but it can also mean that important fundamental parts of the operation side of the business can suffer when people focus on the ‘sexy’ tasks. A lot of the improvements to the organisation have been to the front end of the site without addressing a lot of the key weaknesses of the general day to day running of the transactional side of the business which can be frustrating. Sometimes when a problem needs addressing that is deemed important it can be ignored or set aside in favour of something that an individual prefers to do and only when senior management get involved does something happen. This kind of thing contradicts the flat structural ideal and can actually be more hierarchical than other bigger organisations. The company does change a lot which means that employees also need to be flexible as well.
