Great people care, poor experience and processes - Anonymous employee ShelterBox Employee Review

3.0
20 Feb 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- ShelterBox is great at caring for the staff. A work-life balance is supported and encouraged. Flexibility is inherent in the culture. Strong internal and external support for mental and emotional health. - Regular global staff meetings are helpful and communications cascades ensure information is shared. - Desire to improve, but not always with will. - Flexible funding. - Strong values but broad strategy. - Competitive salaries and benefits.

Cons

- The modality of ShelterBox (fully remote management without sustained country presence) is not suitable for growth and strong implementation. - Overhead and staff costs very high. - Unsure of what the CEO does in the organisation. - Multiple strategy refreshes and not enough strategy implementation. - Reluctance to be flexible and utilise the freedom of flexible funding. - Slow to respond to emergencies. - Not enough experienced humanitarian staff who understand the sector. - Vagueness on localisation. Immense compliance requirements for implementing partners. - Change is slow.

Explore other reviews about ShelterBox

4.0
14 Jun 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Relaxed work environment, friendly colleagues, open to new ideas

Cons

I can't think of any

1
3.0
30 Nov 2021
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Very helpful colleagues who are all very passionate about their work and generally a joy to be around and collaborate with. Leadership wants you to succeed and does a good job creating a collaborative environment that rewards hard work and creates good work life balance

Cons

For people who have worked for other humanitarian organizations, the way shelterbox works is outdated. Relying on volunteer response teams and limiting responses to distributing "stuff" is generally no longer acceptable in most professional humanitarian circles. The organization is working through this but still very committed to it's root of "The Box". Also very frustrating dynamic between U.S. and U.K. teams due to seperate operating entities and at times competing fundraising, can get territorial and result in counterproductive restrictions and communications flows. Overall, a good organization to be a part of for those new to the humanitarian sector but not much flexibility in approach so those who have worked for other international organizations will likely run into a lot of frustrating roadblocks

3
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