FHI 360 Employee Reviews about "senior management"

Pros

Utilized professionals in all possible disciplines: medical practitioners, development practitioners, mathematicians, accountants, communicators, agriculturalists, surveyors, statisticians and others. This produced remarkable and all round results in communities and promoted further growth of the organization, allowing it to approach every situation with the best respective equipment.

Cons

Resolving communication problems sometimes delayed for a while even when the issue seemed minor, without very convincing advice and information from senior management.

Pros

Good relationship with USAID, concern about staff security

Cons

Hugely bureaucratic apparatus in DC and NC is totally divorced from reality and obsesses over documentation of every little action in order to shield the organisation from all potential legal liabilities. Senior management routinely display incompetence and inability to cooperate across departments. I witnessed senior managers scapegoating field staff and attempting to have them fired in order to cover up mistakes made by HQ staff. With such gross misconduct on a regular basis, is it surprising that the turnover rate in my department was above 70%?

Pros

Organization does great work, has talented employees

Cons

Lack of direction form senior management; new policies and procedures rolled out without adequate support

Pros

Great Mission supported by caring and committed staff. Wonderful colleagues. The work is interesting and challenging. Excellent pay and benefits.

Cons

Where is the leadership? Under constant reorganizaion with no sense of direction or rationale. Heavy workload due to high turnover and constant introduction of new initiatives on top of existing responsibilities. Bad managers are not held accountable. Senior management cannot seem to commit to a direction or decision. Anything can be over-turned or re-decided again, so there is no commitment.

Pros

flexibility of schedule to work remotely

Cons

This organization is very 'woke' and personal beliefs that contradict with the views of senior management are not welcome. This organization is not inclusive to those with differing views.

Pros

Benefits are quite good. Once you escape the entry level positions, salaries can be competitive for the sector. Some of the staff are great to work with, although sadly too many of the best staff have been pushed out the door or left, so fewer of them are left.

Cons

Senior management are completely clueless and out of touch. The CEO is in his own LaLaLand most of the time, and the COO seems completely ill-equipped for the job. The organization somehow continues to do well in spite of leadership's incompetence, primarily on the backs of hardworking foot soldiers. Units operate like personal fiefdoms, often competing with each so their feudal lords can gain more prestige and power. Loyalty to senior and mid-level management is often valued more than competence. HR has too many loudmouths who often don't take employee feedback in confidence, or simply ignore it. Systems and processes are often illogical and barriers to effective implementation, but people responsible tend to just shrug their shoulders about it. Strategic initiatives are often poorly thought out and money pits that reward certain feudal lords at the expense of efforts that would actually be worthwhile. Accountability and merit are just buzzwords, as ultimately a lot of decisions are made based on personal whim.

Pros

Very good benefits for employees

Cons

Very poor quality senior management team that has been promoted from the bottom.

Pros

A friendly and collegial place to work where people are collaborative and support each other at the worker bee level. The benefits are generous and management is flexible about work schedules and working from home, which is wonderful for staff with children and familial obligations. Staff are very smart and it is an intellectually interesting place to work. People genuinely care about the mission and want to do good in the world.

Cons

As mentioned in many other reviews, senior management (those at the Executive Management Team level and the C-suite) are seriously out of touch with their own employees, the development marketplace, and management best practices in general. Major issues that negatively affect staff retention, revenue, and business development are continually surfaced through various fora to leadership (including the CEO's somewhat surreal idea that he can manage a large organization through a comment box) and then willfully ignored. It is a mystery why they bother to ask us how to make things better if they aren't willing to address any problems. Our management structure allocates accountability to all but responsibility to none which leads to confusion and inaction which results in the total demoralization of management and technical staff. The perennial leadership response to this comment is to create endless working groups that are accountable to no one and produce zero results. It is like all of senior management has OCD and can't focus on an issue long enough to solve it.

Pros

Decent benefits but typical of most federal contractors of their size. Some nice staff who try to be helpful within their scope of work and authority. Employee resource groups to try to boost morale.

Cons

Not a strong sense of mission and highly siloed departmentss that don't communicate with each other. Clueless Compensation Dept which can't account for the higher DC cost of living compared to the small town, NC headquarters where they all sit. They're a complete hindrance to hiring externally & internally. It's almost like they thrive on being a complete obstacle with more power than the most senior directors who know what they're looking for in staffing. The Compensation staff all work remotely across the US & are tone deaf to the very high cost of living in DC so many positions are under paid. It's common knowledge that you need to leave FHI 360 to get a higher salary or a promotion and forget about lateral transfer to a different dept. FHI loses talent to their competitors b/c who wants to deal with inept HR that can't figure out staffing in international development? Ridiculous layers upon layers of senior management to the point where you don't know what they actually do and those directors managers couldn't tell you what the 'worker bees' do daily. They simply go in circles talking about processes and systems. Some departments are stronger than others but good luck if you're stuck with a dept with a horrible director. They'll never get fired nor will be asked to leave. Senior management often promoted from within and don't have the experience managing large staff. Completely clueless..