SNV World > Our advisers > Introduction

A diverse mix of professionals

SNV employees some 1,000 professional advisers in the field, distributed across 100 teams world wide. In order to deal effectively with the complex issues that they face in their work, the teams incorporate a diverse mix of professionals with varied technical expertise, and different cultural and professional backgrounds. What they share are SNV’s values of respect and trust, equity and quality, diversity, and people-centeredness.

With the increasing specialisation of advisory practice across its five regions, SNV has developed and implemented a tailored Human Resources Development strategy. It is designed to equip its advisers with the necessary skills to remain competitive in the advisory market. Advisers with a shared specialism share knowledge through different (e-)tools and knowledge networks. To keep as up-to-date as possible, advisers change their work environment within SNV every three years.

Advisers strengthen their clients’ capacities within the scope of SNV’s positioning choices. Each advisor is specialised in one of these working areas. Basic services sectors, value chains, knowledge brokering and engagement with local capacity building’s demand continued strengthening of expertise.

The ratio of senior/medium/junior staff is set in such a way as to promote a gradual shift towards more senior advisers. Senior advisers play an important role in day to day coaching in order to raise the knowledge, skills and attitude of medium level and junior professional staff.

SNV’s corporate programme for Young Professionals aims to ensure a more balanced composition of advisers within teams. Promising young university graduates are being recruited to ensure assimilation of the latest (academic) insights into SNV’s practice, and to help strengthen links with the academic world. Likewise, collaboration with academic institutions are being expanded to facilitate the placement of SNV interns.

SNV strongly aims for a an equal division between men and women in all layers of the organisation. Also, our expatriate workforce is increasingly international with a growing number of recruits coming from a variety of countries.

Facts & figures

The percentage of female advisers ranges from 31 per cent in Asia to 41 per cent in the Balkans (with an average of 35 percent).

In line with SNV’s strategic orientations, an increasing part of its work is done by local capacity builders and external consultants (13 percent).

With regard to the number of advisers, there has recently been an increase in the Balkans, in line with SNV’s intentions to extend beyond the Albanian programme, while there was a reduction of staff in the East and Southern African region.