Oxfam reviews

3.9

66% would recommend to a friend

(1,669 total reviews)
avatar

Mark Goldring

68% approve of CEO

52% positive business outlook

Oxfam has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 1,669 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Oxfam 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

2K reviews
3.0
Oct 6, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The pay is very good and there is good team spirit. Plus you get lots of exercise knocking door to door!

Cons

The conditions are very harsh - you can lose your job with one bad week. There is also very little communication between levels of management. The worst thing is that management seem far more driven by sales than by the work of Oxfam. There is no connection between this department and Oxfam Ireland themselves except that they're in the same building and one funds the other. Don't hope for career progression within Oxfam via this route.

3.0
Nov 7, 2014

Volunteer at Oxfam books

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There was no interview: I just filled in a form and then brought it back to the shop and the Deputy Manager called me after few days, asking me to come to the shop for a chat. She simply asked me why do you want to volunteer with us? I said that I had a lot of free time, because I was looking for a job, and I wanted to do something more useful than staying at home all day waiting for e-mails. She said "Bored? I understand." So she offered me to volunteer there twice a week, on Saturday morning and Thursday afternoon (4 hours per shift). Later you can choose freely (but considering when there are few volunteers) which days and hours you want to work. Relaxed and friendly atmosphere, no pressure, you can always ask someone, they accept you even if your English is not very good. There is always someone else around if you have doubts or problems. Some volunteers are very nice and one gave me advice on how to find jobs or more exciting volunteer experiences. After maybe 4 times I got a chance to stay at the till and speak to customers. You can pick up a section you are interested in and you know something about (e.g. history books) and change items on display, decide what to keep etc. I asked the Manager if I could use him as a reference and he said yes.

Cons

Some volunteers aren't very talkative and often it's just sorting books in silence. The atmosphere isn't lively at all. A lot of books are thrown away even though they have only minor flaws (e.g yellowish pages): of course they cannot keep everything as they receive a lot of unsellable books or lots of copies of the same book. I don't always agree on how they set prices for donated items. One section I had ordered and repriced more reasonably (in which I am more expert than every other person there) has been changed after few days, separating books that should be sold together and raising prices for small books that are too old in their approach to the subject to have a good value.

3.0
Nov 11, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Flexible work from anywhere Good pay Nice work colleagues Rewarding work, dream company, inspiring, learning environment

Cons

Politics with management Corruption, favouritism Assessing people based on who likes who over who’s really great at work No upward mobility unless you make friends with an executive Management are inexperienced (not all) and untrained Executive do not listen to upper management Lack of transparency and accountability Hierarchical, archaic leading to things never resolving, everything escalating with no accountability and no shared working and incredible silos. Silos also do help management control everyone.

Viewing 31 - 33 of 1,669 Reviews

Glassdoor has 2,307 Oxfam reviews submitted anonymously by Oxfam employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Oxfam is right for you.