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Innovations for Poverty Action

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Innovations for Poverty Action reviews

3.6

63% would recommend to a friend

(244 total reviews)
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Annie Duflo

82% approve of CEO

56% positive business outlook

Innovations for Poverty Action has an employee rating of 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 244 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Innovations for Poverty Action employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the ONG y Organizaciones sin fines de lucro industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

244 reviews
3.0
Apr 23, 2018

No structure due to lack of good management staff.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The benefits and the ability to work remotely. If you’re manager allows it. The work done in the field is important to fully understand how to assist people in need.

Cons

Unprofessional management, whom think it’s appropriate to speak about their staff in the open, usually slandering their good name. Finance department takes months to close, yes I said months to close the books. There is no training, you will be thrown on a computer and expect to know what to do. Since everyone is so busy no one has the time to explain or train, yet they tell you they do. A week of training upon starting would be awesome or at least webinars, something! Managers will throw people under the bus to save themselves. The employees are nice, but you never know who to trust! Very minimal employee socialization, since everyone is too busy. One task can take you all day, while your emails are piling up. The emails can be in the vicinity of 40-70 per day. Emails must be deciphered and researching anything is nearly impossible, due to the fact they don’t standardize anything needed to be standardized. Very high turn over due to the jobs burn people out. I have seen people never come back and just disappear. A few weeks later people finally notice they are no longer there and that’s it! It goes the other way as well, people get fired after years of service, apparently they made too many mistakes. Unstable environment!

5.0
May 16, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- I worked at IPA for over three years (in three different country offices) and had five different supervisors, all of whom were amazing. I always had supervisors that cared about my career goals and professional development. - You get to work with high profile researchers (although as for the question of how closely, it varies by project) - The organisation puts a lot of emphasis on transparency and high rigour of research methods. Over the past years, IPA has developed great research protocols to follow, so you get to learn a lot about how to conduct and manage research projects. - IPA is well recognised in the industry. And the skills you gain from working at IPA will certainly land you a similar job relatively easily (e.g. consultancy with the world bank or other international organisations) - IPA provides a very good insurance policy and a good number of vacation days. Plus, if you're based in a country office, IPA also observes national holidays on top of the regular vacation days. - There is no politics and there always is great team spirit. People are always willing to help even if it falls beyond the scope of their job description. - You get to save a decent percentage of your income if you're living in a developing country.

Cons

- It's still a growing organisation and the rules may apply differently depending on the country office and your supervisor. - High turnover means there often are gaps in institutional knowledge and you might be unlucky to be the one who has to deal with the aftermath of poorly managed projects. - I think the benefits are fairly good if you compare IPA to similar organisations in the area. If you were to compare IPA to international organisations, it definitely lacks family-related benefits. I do not think IPA is a good employer for a parent with children because IPA does not subsidise housing or education of children which can be expensive in developing countries if you want to send them to international schools of high standard. - It's a fairly simple organisation with not many levels of jobs. Once you reach the manager level (which many do in their late 20s or early 30s), there is not much more to do from there unless you want to become a country director.

3.0
Jan 28, 2016

Dysfunctional org, amazing work

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The work is highly rewarding. You are on the frontiers of international development research. Field work in particular is fantastic, with the opportunity to collaborate with top government officials as well as members of the target communities. Most people who work for IPA are young, passionate, and very smart. Despite the cons listed below, this really is the most rewarding job I have ever had.

Cons

Really dysfunctional senior management that is increasingly disconnected from the realities facing country offices. They make unilateral, abrupt, and often poor decisions without carefully considering the consequences...or they fail to make any decisions at all, leaving major problems unaddressed for months, if not years. Turnover is high at all levels or the organization, in large part due to terrible pay and poor working conditions (long hours, poor leadership). IPA is increasingly losing its best and brightest to competitors, which are growing/expanding by the day. Most people at IPA are candid about the fact that they are looking to go elsewhere in the near future.

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Glassdoor has 353 Innovations for Poverty Action reviews submitted anonymously by Innovations for Poverty Action employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Innovations for Poverty Action is right for you.