JOB DETAILS
LOCATION: HSPs are globally roving and work away from their home base continuously. Typically, they are deployed to a particular location from a few weeks up to six months’ duration per assignment. HSPs could expect to be deployed to country programmes up to nine months a year (pro-rata for part-time posts). Our current emergency programmes are in Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Asia.
When not deployed (or on annual leave) HSPs may be assigned project / proactive work, the location in which the HSP undertakes this work will be determined by legal and cost implications
CONTRACT TYPE: Open-ended
JOB FAMILY: Programme
GRADE: B2
DEPARTMENT: Global Humanitarian Team (GHT)
TEAM: HSP Team
SALARY: £45,506 net per annum
HOURS: 36 hours per week
FLEXIBLE WORKING
We believe flexible working is key to building the Oxfam of the future, so we’re open to talking through the type of
flexible arrangements which might work for you.
COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
We are committed to ensuring diversity and gender equality within our organization.
GLOBAL HUMANITARIAN TEAM PURPOSE:
The Global Humanitarian Team (GHT) has designated responsibilities to support, coordinate and lead humanitarian response and policies to reduce the impact of, prepare for and respond to crises, harnessing the resources of the whole Oxfam confederation to deliver support for Oxfam’s strategic plan.
The GHT has designated responsibilities to support, coordinate and lead humanitarian response and policies to reduce the impact of, prepare for and respond to crises, harnessing the resources of the whole Oxfam confederation to deliver support for Oxfam’s strategic plan. The GHT works across Oxfam countries and regions and in close coordination with others.
GHT will work with others to maximize the quality and impact of Oxfam’s humanitarian programme by:
- Delivering rapid, safe and high-quality emergency surge capacity.
- Supporting programme strategy, operational design, humanitarian preparedness and response.
- Promote greater local humanitarian leadership and collaborate on our approach to fragility and across the nexus
- Facilitate the development of humanitarian capacity across Oxfam and partner organisations through building and brokering a cross confederation network andcommunity
- Supporting the gathering of evidence to enable learning, innovation and advocating for change across the sector.
- Working with Campaigns and Policy to influence for greater respect of the basic rights of crisis affected men and women.
- Working closely with affiliate offices in their roles for the best interests of the humanitarian programme.
- Ensure connection with global and technical humanitarian system and coordination
HSP TEAM PURPOSE
What is a Humanitarian Support Personnel (HSP)?
The Humanitarian Support Personnel (HSP) Team comprises of technical humanitarian experts from various fields across the globe who bring their skills and experience to Oxfam’s country teams to help them respond to conflicts and natural disasters.
JOB PURPOSE
To operationally manage medium to large scale emergency responses to meet humanitarian needs. The post holder will be expected to manage the entire operational programme, from emergency programme design to implementation and programme related advocacy/policy work. Post holder will also be expected to help Oxfam’s programmes to better prepare and help communities at risk to deal with future shocks and stresses. Post holder will also be expected to cover key vacant posts including at country director (smaller country programmes) level.
Be accountable for ensuring community participation shapes programme decisions, actively seek a partnership approach and work following feminist principles including strong awareness of power dynamics.
To, along with other technical staff, advisors and managers, promote safe programming in all humanitarian responses. To be accountable for ensuring community participation shapes programme decisions, actively seek a partnership approach and worked following feminist principles including strong awareness of power dynamics.
JOB REPORTS TO:
Humanitarian Coordinator. Please note that this is subject to change and line management may revert to another member of the senior leadership team.
Whilst on deployment, will report to Country Director or designated Manager.
JOBS REPORTING TO THIS JOB
Varies depending on deployment; typically, Programme Managers, Finance, HR, Logs, communications/media and policy staff.
BUDGET RESPONSIBILITY
Yes – Varies depending on the size of programme where you are deployed
GEOGRAPHICAL SCOPE
World-wide. Our current emergency programmes are in Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Asia.
IMPACT
Internal: country and regional level, cross-confederation
External: sector specific, could have external representation
on behalf of Oxfam
KEY STAKEHOLDERS
Internal: Country & regional teams, Global Humanitarian Team
External: other INGOs, NNGOs, UN agencies, country clusters
DIMENSIONS OF THE ROLE
- Required to developlong term visionand strategic planning to achieve significant impact from a major programme unit.
- Provides leadership of specific majorprogramme unit including setting and leadingthe delivery of specified programme unit and/or team objectives.
- Plans and manages human and financial resources and processes related to a specific programme unit and/or area of expertise.
- Manages a broadspectrum of programmes or geographies, requiring a variety of competences and skills of the job holder. Management tasks and problems are diverse and complex and involve a significant degree of risk (financial, security, brand).
- Produces, assimilates, analyses and uses programme information from variedand diverse sources to provide in- depth analysis in the specific programme unit or policy area.
- Decision-making is strategic and operational witha high degree of judgement based on specific problem solving experience, drawing on a range of external and internal factors.
- Works autonomously with significant financial, human resource, security and representational responsibility.
- Is the key decision maker/responsible person for a programme unit.
- Plans and implements fundraising plans and ensures proper reporting and accountability to multilateral
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
This position will be accountable for the operational management of medium to large scale Oxfam emergency responses. The post holder will undertake a series of assignments for which specific Terms of Reference will be negotiated and agreed with relevant parties, prior to, and or revised in the early stages of the deployment.
Typically, the post holder will be responsible for a budget of between four and twelve million Euros, a programme that assists between two hundred thousand and a million people and a matrix-managed team of between fifty to two hundred staff.
The post holder will:
- Promote collaborative working relationships with key stakeholders in regions (Regional Humanitarian Coordinators, Country Directors, country programme staff and partners) and Global
Humanitarian Team colleagues in the Delivery, Strategic Focus Areas, and Quality and Capacity teams to support the delivery of effective, high quality humanitarian programmes in line with Oxfam’s vision for humanitarian preparedness and response
- Promote integrated, gender aware humanitarian responses which demonstrate accountability to beneficiaries and are consistent with Oxfam policies and international quality standards
- Ensure that programme design and implementation is consistent with Oxfam’s quality and accountability standards, emergency guidelines and protocols, the Core Humanitarian Standard and that work meets Sphere Standards and other external quality commitments.
Management
- Oversee management and support the assessments of emergency situations, reporting with recommendations and proposals for Oxfam’s response. This will typically include coordinating multiple assessment missions across one or several countries.
- Set up new and manage ongoing medium to large-scale and complex humanitarian response programmes, into the maintenance, recovery and closing phases, ensuring project implementation conforms to proposals, beneficiary needs and as agreed with the donor.
- Selection and assessments of partner organisations
- Monitor compliance and manage and monitor programme and business functions within a country programme, often in high-risk or fragile state contexts. Ensure that all Oxfam programmes operate within the laws of the country and comply with Oxfam policies and procedures.
- Ensure sound financial management of the programme including regular and timely narrative and financial reporting against objectives and budgets, typically by setting up adequate management arrangements at country programme level.
- Manage staff according to Oxfam procedures and policies, including performance management, ensuring that staff are supported and given opportunities and training for development.
- With the Oxfam programme management line (usually Regional and Country Directors) lead the design and adjustment of programme management structures.
- Ensure the programme design integrates capacity building of staff and local partners, and that realistic hand-over arrangements are planned for early on.
- Ensure staff safety, security and evacuation (medical/security) procedures are drawn up, implemented, revised and updated. Approve security plans when necessary. Act as country-wide or regional security focal point and decision maker.
- Support, with the rest of technical staff, advisors and managers, the understanding and use of key analytical tools and frameworks related to safe programming.
Strategy Development and Learning
- Strategy development and implementation, including programme, policy, advocacy, communication, monitoring/evaluation and business support aspects. This entails the development of an emergency response strategy in the early stages of medium to large-scale responses, giving strategic guidance within the scale-up phase of emergency operations.
- Ensure that the programme meets agreed Oxfam quality standards and is developed in a consultative, participative, sensitive to culture, gender and other power dynamics and ensure that they are informed by the community to benefit from the work.
- Strategic decision making on key decisions for the programme. This can include decisions on whether to open up new response areas, on scale and scope of programmes, on prioritisation between different areas and on hand-over / phase out arrangements.
- Ensure humanitarian information, learning and knowledge are developed in responses, and ensure these are actively shared and managed with the Quality and Evidence team, other internal stakeholders and externally.
- Keep informed of relevant programme issues and initiate and contribute to wider programme learning – also by initiating and facilitating programme learning events and evaluations
- Support country-level contingency and preparedness planning
Representation
- At country level, represent Oxfam externally to government officials, UN agencies, donors, and NGOs. Developing good networks and relationships for Oxfam with these agencies, often on regional level and between countries, to create formal and informal alliances towards joint objectives
- Represent Oxfam internally to country staff, modelling core competencies and behaviours of Oxfam humanitarian staff (“leading by example”), inspiring managers to help staff grow into Oxfam’s organisational culture.
- Advocate on key issues at programme level and feed into external advocacy initiatives, and proactively search out and suggest focus areas for advocacy work.
- When not deployed, duties may include research work, participation in audits, evaluations and staff trainings, public speaking and media work or other suitable tasks as assigned by the line manager
PERSON SPECIFICATION
Most importantly, every individual in Oxfam needs to be able to:
- Live our values of INCLUSION, ACCOUNTABILITY, EMPOWERMENT, COURAGE, SOLIDARITY and EQUALITY (read more about these here)
- Ensure you commit to our ORGANIZATIONAL ATTRIBUTES (including adhering to the Code of Conduct):
1. Be committed to ourfeminist principles, and to applying them in your day-to-day behaviour and
your work. Be ready to keep learning, with accountability to those who experience oppression as a result of their identities, such as their gender, race/ethnicity, disability, class, or LGBTQIA identity.”
2. Be committed to undertaking Oxfam’s
safeguarding training and adhering to relevant policies, to ensure all people who come into Oxfam are as safe as possible.
EXPERIENCE, KNOWLEDGE & COMPETENCIES
Minimum requirements all HSPs are expected to fulfil:
- Ability to deploy at short notice to areas affected by crisis and support the rapid scale up of humanitarian programmes to meet lifesaving needs of affected people.
- Management skills: HSP deployments usually involve managing a team to deliver the work, HSPs will need to demonstrate management competencies, of international and multi-cultural teams, in difficult and stressful environments.
- Behavioural skills; all HSP deployments require the individual to successfully work with and mentor others often under challenging circumstances. HSPs should demonstrate competencies around “listening and creating dialogue” and “working with others” as well as networkingskills.
For this role, you will be expected to role model Oxfam’s feminist leadership approach and we have selected the most relevant feminist leadership practices which we will use for assessment purposes (which you can read more about here):
- Self-Awareness
- Agility, Complexity and Ambiguity
- Relationshipbuilding
- Mutual Accountability
Essential
- Significant experience of managing and coordinating large-scale emergency programmes in complex environments
- In-depth understanding of relevant humanitarian principles and policies
- Excellent teamwork skills, and a track record of building trust within and empowering large teams, also over distance
- Proven influencing, negotiating and networking skills with internal and external audiences.
- Confident high-level representation and coordination skills.
- Analytical and strategic planning skills.
- Proven financial management skills and experienced in managing compliance in large-scale programmes.
- Ability to take initiative and make decisions with limited support in fast moving environments.
- Ability to deploy at short notice to areas affected by humanitarian crises
- Sensitivity to cultural differences, and the ability to work in a wide variety of cultural contexts.
- Ability and willingness to work under pressure and in challenging and insecure environments.
- Good communication skills
- Good written and spoken English
At interview, shortlisted candidates will also be assessed on our values and organisational attributes, as outlined above.
Desirable
- Knowledge and experience of working in resilience, disaster risk reduction and disaster preparedness programmes.
- Experience working with partnerships and community-based groups.
- Working knowledge of one or more additional languages, specifically French, Spanish orArabic.
SAFER RECRUITMENT
Oxfam is committed to preventing any type of unwanted behaviour at work including sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse, lack of integrity and financial misconduct; and promoting the welfare of children, young people and adults. Oxfam expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment through our code of conduct. We place a high priority on ensuring that only those who share and demonstrate our values are recruited to work for us. Offers of employment will be subject to satisfactory references and appropriate screening checks, which can include criminal records and terrorism finance checks.
