Senior Advisor, Management Support, P5 (TA), Geneva

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is offering a Temporary Appointment within the Division of Human Resources – Office of the Director in Geneva, Switzerland.

UNHCR is a global organisation dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people. Every year, millions of men, women and children are forced to flee their homes to escape conflict and persecution. We are in over 125 countries, using our expertise to protect and care for millions.

Title: Senior Advisor, Management Support (P5)
Duty Station: Geneva, Switzerland
Duration: 12 months
Contract Type: Temporary Appointment
Closing date: 8 March 2022
Start date: As soon as possible

Organisational context

The position is based in the Director’s Office of the Division of Human Resources (DHR). DHR works with and supports UNHCR’s highly dedicated, diverse and mobile workforce, over 18,000 people serving in 130 countries. Services provided cover all aspects of the employee journey, including assignment and recruitment, personnel administration, health and wellbeing, learning and development, inclusion & diversity, as well as strategic HR and vision-setting for the people function at UNHCR.

In 2019, UNHCR launched its multi-year HR transformation, based on a field-driven partnership model and aims at enabling a positive employee experience for all colleagues. The DHR Director’s Office is an enabler of this strengthened partnership and an agent of change and engagement.

The position

The manager-employee relationship, supported by HR, has a significant impact on UNHCR’s ability to deliver results, as well as on people’s daily life. Good relationships have the potential to build accountability and foster strong performance, engagement, and resilience, and can help prevent stress, conflicts, failure to deliver, as well as potential misconduct.

Following the High Commissioner’s commitment to strengthen people management practices across UNHCR and in recognition of the strong correlation between a positive work environment and UNHCR’s ability to deliver effectively on its mandate, the Division of Human Resources (DHR) is establishing a multifaceted approach to good people management, including a People Management Guide.

The People Management Guide will be built on the premise of partnership rather than compliance and aims to provide guidance to managers and employees on available resources and adaptable solutions to strengthen engagement, improve dialogue within teams, increase efficiency as well as proactively address issues that may lead to conflicts in the workplace locally, early, and effectively. This dynamic Guide is preventative in nature and spans across the services provided by DHR, including psychosocial support and has linkages to the Ethics Office, the Ombudsman, LAS and the IGO. As such it is an essential part of the High Commissioner’s efforts to strengthen UNHCR’s response to workplace challenges.

To facilitate this ambitious agenda, DHR is establishing a dedicated function as Senior Advisor, Management Support to lead its efforts in this regard. The Senior Advisor plays a key role in activating the Guide, working in partnership with managers and colleagues across DHR and in coordination with other key stakeholders including inter alia Ethics and Ombudsman offices. Their main focus is on supporting managers to embrace and exemplify good people management practices and engage in proactive and constructive resolution of workplace tensions in UNHCR. The Advisor also carries responsibility for coordinating the People Management Guide, which spans across DHR and interlinks with integrity functions, jointly contributing to improving workplace culture in UNHCR.

Duties and responsibilities

Managerial Partnership and early intervention

Reporting to the Director of Human Resources, the Senior Advisor, Management Support acts on various levels to engage with multiple stakeholders to contribute to building an exponentially positive employee experience across UNHCR. Specifically, they are responsible for:

• Providing targeted advice, support, and guidance to managers on people-related issues to support their efforts to proactively create a safe and respectful working environment while promoting greater accountability, efficiency, and responsiveness to the UNHCR mandate.
• Supporting managers to have healthy, supportive relationships with direct reports, peers, stakeholders and to deal with people management issues in need of early intervention, as identified directly or referred to DHR through the newly established triaging and coordination functions lead by the Ethics Office.
• Responding to particularly challenging workplace issues by targeted interventions, involving other parts of DHR, the Senior HR Partners or referring to other relevant integrity functions as required.
• Coordinating Management Implication Reports directed to DHR arising from investigations.

Coordination and Advisory Support

• Coordinating and driving the continuous improvement of the People Management Guide through lessons learned and contributing to the development of measures to support proactive and positive people management practices in the areas of, performance management, team leadership, people management practices, coaching and counselling in coordination with relevant stakeholders.
• In coordination with the Senior HR Partners in each region, providing timely, consistent coaching, advice, and support on all aspects of the People Management Guide. This includes but is not limited to team management, performance management, recruitment, recognition and reward, and leadership development.
• Establishing and maintaining strategic partnerships with key stakeholders to facilitate common people management understanding and approaches, including regular interactions with Ethics Office, Ombuds, the Senior Coordinator on Prevention and Response to SEA and SH, Staff Health and Wellbeing, IGO and LAS within and beyond the Informal Conflict Management Support Group and other mechanisms as relevant.

People Management Expertise and Guidance

• Providing guidance and expertise to the Director DHR on interventions and solutions to particularly sensitive, complex situations and senior level people management issues.
• Identifying, defining, and implementing effective measures to identify common trends and issues related to people management to influence data-driven decisions and contribute to the development of initiatives and improvements to current people management practices and policies.
• Undertake other tasks and functions as may be assigned in line with the objectives of these TORs.

Essential minimum qualifications and professional experience required

The ideal candidate will possess:

• 12 years of relevant experience with Undergraduate degree; or 11 years relevant experience with Graduate degree; or 10 years relevant experience with Doctorate degree.
• Experience in Human Resources management, coaching, people management
• Experience and credibility as a manager with demonstrated people management and leadership skills
• Excellent communication skills
• Coaching certification essential
• Empathetic, authentic and effective at forming trusted relationships working across functions
• Collaborative, autonomous and creative
• Stress-resilient and capacity to drive independently the objectives of these TORs
• Fluent in English, and French highly desirable
• Able to use Microsoft Office products

Location

The successful candidate will be based with the team in Geneva, Switzerland.

Conditions

This Temporary Appointment is for twelve months, and the start date is as soon as possible. It is a full-time role with working hours starting from 9.00am to 6.00pm Monday to Friday (40 hours per week).