World Wildlife Fund reviews

It is a large organization, as such, there is bureaucracy, and a big ship moves slower than a small one. However, positive internal change does happen, and I believe the Senior Management Team wants this to be a great place, and works towards making that happen—it is the best organization I've ever worked for.

- The pay is a joke. You can expect to hear how the management is "reviewing the salary structure", it's a lie. I have heard this for over a year and the only salary bumps you will see happening are your friends’ who do not work in WWF. There is literally ZERO adjustment to your salary unless you get promoted, and even then the pay raise is ridiculously low. What this means is that if you factor in inflation, your purchasing power is literally decreasing year by year. Meanwhile, whatever money the organisation does have goes into hiring consultants who are paid to do the jobs of the management themselves. I get that you don’t enter an NGO for money, but at the very least, shouldn’t a company provide fair wages? What makes this fact even harder to swallow is that we actively advocate for businesses to pay their employees fairly as required by sustainable certifications, but we fail to hold ourselves to the same standards. After seeing this happening for so long, I have decided to stop all my donations to this place. I would rather burn this money than continue giving it away to this bunch of self-serving people. - Big egos and a complete lack of understanding towards conservation amongst the management. The former could be addressed if the people in question are willing to learn but unfortunately the majority choose to remain wilfully ignorant or outright refuse to bother. The situation is exacerbated when the management attempts to run this organisation like a private business (e.g. a bank) or like an army. Some of the C-suite level/directors are unable to take no for an answer and will retaliate to make your life utterly miserable. The rest are too scared to stand up for what's right and will simply watch as this happens. Pretty ironic considering how this company claims that its values include courage and integrity. The management fails to see that conservation includes more than protection of habitats, it includes educating the public, holding businesses and governments accountable for their actions. Granted that Singapore’s politics are harder to influence; this does not mean impossible. However, since the board and even some members of the management have connections with the politicians, they are leery of anything that could be seen as “criticism”. So if you are looking to change Sg in this manner, look elsewhere. There are local NGOs who do a better job than this place. - Lack of communication, transparency and trust. This organisation has a nasty habit of springing bad news and key developments/changes (e.g. the changing of our 13th month pay) last minute, usually in the late evening or at night on a Friday. Announcements are made with no proper brief, no proper FAQs and employees are just supposed to roll with it. If this is a tactic to evade potential backlash and give employees time to adapt during the weekend, I would advise you to fire your HR team or whoever that gave you this bright idea. All this does is ruin your employees’ rest as they unnecessarily panic. We often do not know what goes on amongst the management and what are their plans (to be fair, they probably have no idea what they are doing either) – we are just supposed to execute. Which would be fine, but often times the decisions made are irrational and a waste of donor money. By the way, town halls are not an answer – nobody wants to sit through 3 hours long town halls. - Here’s a special shout out to the HR team: Nobody trusts you. Nobody. Let’s not even talk about protecting the staff. Let’s just talk about how you fail even at the core tenets of your jobs. Number 1: hiring the right person for the role. More often than not, scummy people are hired (even to your own team) and they can’t even do their jobs right. At one point, we even had a HR head that does not know or bother to learn our local labour laws. Granted that he is now gone, but the fact that he was ever hired proves how incompetent this team, and by large, the management team, is. Number 2: career progression. The lack of progression amongst the junior staff is extremely concerning. Pair this up with the phenomenon where you see incidences of expats > locals being promoted to senior/managerial positions; you get a ticking time bomb. Why are your employees constantly forced to jump through so many hoops to be promoted? If they are already doing above and beyond what their JD is, shouldn’t this be cause for promotion?? Why the over emphasis on the number of years of work exp/services? Why are you not evaluating based on competency and achievements? 3: Employee retention. In the first quarter of the year, the number of people leaving this organisation is in the double digits and this does not seem like it will end. Isn’t this high time to take a good hard look at yourself and admit where you are screwing up? It’s not hard, you can dig up the recent exit interviews. - Double standards. New employees are expected to have the necessary skills/knowledge to do their jobs when they are hired. Afterwards, they have a probation period to evaluate and confirm that they know how to do their jobs. I don’t think this requirement is being imposed on our management. We have seen two CEOs now that do not know or understand conservation work despite the fact that they have been in position for about a YEAR. We have seen directors that frankly speaking, do not know what conservation is as well. While we do not expect them to possess deep technical knowledge, it is disturbing that they don’t even understand the bigger picture or what their team is doing. BY THE WAY, your staff knows when you are fluffing. We say nothing because we don’t want to get fired. Just know that is incredibly frustrating because it makes us wonder – why on earth are you paid at this level when you can’t deliver? Educate yourself and stop wasting our time and the organisation’s money. I can go on and on but I am exhausted. We all are, which is why we are all leaving one by one. Good luck to all who enter, I do not wish this place on my worst enemy.