WaterAid Reviews

3.9

68% would recommend to a friend

(173 total reviews)
avatar

Tim Wainwright

85% approve of CEO

70% positive business outlook

WaterAid has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 173 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The WaterAid employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Non-profit and NGO industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

173 reviews
5.0
31 Jan 2017

Working at WA

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Strongly ethical, open but professional culture with strong leadership. Management is encourgaging of taking risks and generally transparent about the machinations of the organisation both domestically and abroad.

Cons

I would struggle to think of any serious downsides to working at WaterAid other than some probably pretty unavoidable silos between the departments as whole, a natural situation for an organisation of its size and scope.

5.0
18 Nov 2016

Great place to work

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great culture, Passionate people, excellent benefits

Cons

Opportunity for progression for certain roles

3.0
14 Apr 2023

The people make WaterAid great, but the internal reputation is poor right now.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Had amazing training opportunities here - Worked with caring and compassionate people - Org is vocal about wellbeing and encourage employees to rest, recover and prioritize their personal lives - It feels like sincere effort has been made to decolonise/decentralise power over the last couple of years - Everyone is incredibly connected to the mission and importance of clean water -Great opportunity to work with interesting people from all around the world

Cons

-In my experience poor/lack of communication between teams; the organisation is trying to fix this by making UK staff come into the office more, citing 'in person connection' as the solution. However they aren't looking at the processes and practices that support collaboration otherwise, and haven't consulted with employees about what solutions they'd like to see... many employees don't want to come into the office that often. - Lots of gaps in resourcing - people leave and aren't replaced for months, with other people in the team left to work harder covering tasks and acting up without pay or recognition -Top-down decision making - No union representation; there is an employee representation group being formed (after 1 - 2 years of planning...) but this isn't independent to WaterAid and will be run by employees as volunteers. It's difficult to seek advice or support for workplace grievances, especially when you don't have a good manager. -Slow decision making -Lack of career progression - No one seems to know how to apply the org's new strategy to their work.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 173 Reviews

Glassdoor has 214 WaterAid reviews submitted anonymously by WaterAid employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if WaterAid is right for you.