On-boarding/pre-boarding in job

My daughter got offered a job in a charity in Dublin about three weeks ago. She is due to start in the second week in June. Offer letter received with start date. Initially provided with link to onboarding site to upload her documents, which she did, i.e educational certs, passport, utility bills for ID, Garda vetting form. .

There were mandatory courses there for her to complete, and she was going to complete but the access was then disabled. She contacted HR who said they would raise a ticket and get this fixed. Then the next person said she was not entitled to onboarding access until she started, but the onboarding has the mandatory courses on it as well as counting down the days to the job start date. As the access was disabled she couldn't download their Garda Vetting Form and then upload it but had to request it by email. She got the Garda vetting form by email and sent it back to the email it was sent from, but the HR assistant then emailed from the Dept's email and said she didn't receive it. Garda vetting form sent then to the second email.

My daughter says that from people she knows who worked for the organisation, that often the HR assistants are on short CE contracts. My daughter sent her references straight after the job offer as requested to another HR assistant, but neither of these references have been taken by. When my daughter discovered this she emailed the other HR assistant to find out if they were still seeking her references or had any problem getting them but received no reply.

My daughter is now getting an uneasy feeling about starting this job. She has already given her notice in in her job in London for end May but is now considering retracting this. Any comment/advice would be really helpful. Just wondered if what my daughter is experiencing is quite usual for charity sector here - she works for a large UK charity in London and her experience there would be very different.

Could be something simple as incompetence or perhaps something to do with Trumps hacking the overseas aud budget, was surprised to see how quickly this impacted some Irish charities operating "out fordeign"

Regardless she needs to establish what's going on and if necessary email the CEO or whoever her direct manager is to get to the bottom of this as other avenues seem inexplicably blocked.

This seems confusing/contradictory...

Mothergoose said:

Offer letter received with start date. Initially provided with link to onboarding site to upload her documents, which she did, i.e educational certs, passport, utility bills for ID, Garda vetting form.

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Mothergoose said:

There were mandatory courses there for her to complete, and she was going to complete but the access was then disabled. She contacted HR who said they would raise a ticket and get this fixed. Then the next person said she was not entitled to onboarding access until she started, but the onboarding has the mandatory courses on it as well as counting down the days to the job start date. As the access was disabled she couldn't download their Garda Vetting Form and then upload it but had to request it by email. She got the Garda vetting form by email and sent it back to the email it was sent from, but the HR assistant then emailed from the Dept's email and said she didn't receive it. Garda vetting form sent then to the second email

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The Irish charity sector is in serious trouble and many charities are being defunded by USAID.

At this point in time, it would be difficult to recommend to anyone that they move back to Ireland to take up a role in any Irish charity.

Thanks TMcGibney - I appreciate your advice. I wondered if they were in trouble. What is USAID?

Clubman - my daughter uploaded all her educational certs, passport, utility bills etc on to the onboarding portal when she had access to it, but the Garda Vetting Form woudn't print off correctly, it was all misaligned. She downloaded and completed a blank one that she had previously for another position and uploaded it but they said they wanted one with their logo. She told them she couldn't download it as it was all misaligned when she tried to print it off. They said try again. She went on to the preboarding portal and access had been disabled, so she had to ring them again and ask them to email her the Garda vetting form - apologies if it seemed confusing.

Is the charity funded by USAID?

Might be better staying where she is in London if it is.

@Mothergoose, here is some background on how USAID funding cuts are impacting Irish charities. https://www.rte.ie/news/2025/0419/1508432-us-aid-cuts/

I agree with Brendan that your daughter may be better staying in London.

Best wishes to her (and to you) in making this decision

Thanks Brendan and T McGibney for your advice on this. I looked up USAID and it seems to relate only to Irish NGO's working abroad - is this correct? The charity my daughter has been offered a job in works only in Ireland. We spoke about the advice on here and she is going to email them after the BH on Tuesday and if she hasn't had any concrete replies from them that she is happy with, she is going to withdraw her notice the following Monday, the 28th. My daughter, though wanting to come back home now, feels that if they are so disorganised and not enthusiastic about new staff now, they might not be a good place to work.

A contract job with the HSE for example would take a full 3 months to be 'onboarded' and that's just a temporary job in there through an agency.

She was given a June start date because it takes that long to sort out this admin stuff.

It's only been 3 weeks. I'd be a bit more patient to be honest and not get spooked by the website being messy.
If your daughter can contact a real person and have a calm conversation about it and not jump to conclusions.
Best of luck to her.

Also the references won't be checked for another while so don't take that as inefficiency.

Mothergoose said:

she is going to withdraw her notice the following Monday, the 28th.

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You make that sound like a fait accompli. I've seen this happen several times over the years and the company did not want them back when they changed their minds.

As far as I know there is no obligation on the company to take anyone back who has given notice to quit. It would be very much at their discretion.

Thanks, Sadie. It's not the HSE though - I know they take a long time to get through things. My daughter is concerned as they were wanting her to start within a month, but my daughter's notice period is two months, so hence the start date in June. My daughter wasn't going to renege on her contracted notice period. They agreed to wait for her. There was such a rush in the beginning and now it seems to have fallen flat. My daughter needs to know where she stands. She has a fairly good job in London in the charity sector which she likes, and doesn't want to jeopardise this for a job that may not work out.

Yes, I know, Persia, that they don't have to take her back if she withdraws her notice. I think they might though. They like her. She has worked there for 18 months. Also, charity jobs are not that well paid in London, though her paid isn't that bad, and it is only young people like my daughter who don't mind sharing a house in their twenties that really want to stay in London with the huge cost of accommodation, so I think they will try and keep their staff if possible.

Mothergoose said:

My daughter, though wanting to come back home now, feels that if they are so disorganised and not enthusiastic about new staff now, they might not be a good place to work.

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A lot of organisations are disorganised. So if she wants to come back, she is probably going to find that the company she works for is disorganised. I suspect that the charity sector is less organised than the private sector simply because there would be much more oversight and the private sector would be quicker to get rid of deadwood staff.

Does she know anyone working in the charity? Can she find a contact through Linked In or through her own network? Ask them what it is like to work there.

Glassdoor is another possible source of insider info/reviews of organisations..

Brendan Burgess said:

A lot of organisations are disorganised. So if she wants to come back, she is probably going to find that the company she works for is disorganised. I suspect that the charity sector is less organised than the private sector simply because there would be much more oversight and the private sector would be quicker to get rid of deadwood staff.

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There's a systemic problem here, in that a lot of charities/voluntary bodies get funding for specific programmes or delivery of specific services, but the funding, and how it is spent, is very tighly ring-fenced. The result is that the front-line work is funded but the back-office functions — human resources, audit, IT, etc — are not. The organisations concerned have to raise separate funding/sponsorship to pay for these core services, but this is difficult — would you donate to support a charity's IT department before you would donate to support their soup kitchen?

The upshot is the that core management functions of a lot of charities/voluntary bodies are seriously under-resourced and they operate on a shoestring. And, sometimes, it shows.

T McGibney said:

The Irish charity sector is in serious trouble and many charities are being defunded by USAID.

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Most Irish charities have no operations outside Ireland.

That's at most, only partly true.

ClubMan said:

Glassdoor is another possible source of insider info/reviews of organisations..

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Glassdoor is often only used by people with a gripe (and there are 2 sides to every story) or by people who have been told by their employers what to say. I'd take it with a large pinch of sale.

OP's daughter should go back to the person who interviewed her to ask what is going on.

T McGibney said:

That's at most, only partly true.

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It’s 100% true.

The typical charity in Ireland is something like services for autistic children in Co Limerick. Small, and limited to a specific task with geographical boundaries.

Trocaire, Concern, etc, have operations abroad but this is the minority of NGOs.