United States of America: People and Culture Director

Job Title: People and Culture Director

Sector: Human Resources

Employment Category: Regular

Location: USA-New York, NY - HQ

Job Description

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world's worst humanitarian crises and helps people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC works with people forced to flee from war, conflict and disaster and the host communities which support them, as well as those who remain within their homes and communities. At work today in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities, we restore safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure. The IRC leads the way from harm to home.

IRC's Emergency Unit

The IRC's Emergency Unit oversees IRC's global emergency preparedness and response activities. The mission of the Emergency Unit is to help meet the immediate survival needs and reduce suffering in conflict or disaster affected populations during the acute phase of an emergency. The Emergency Unit is also charged with enhancing the IRC's global and country level emergency preparedness capacity. We do this by supporting the development and training of Country Emergency Teams, assisting in the development of emergency focused partnerships with local civil society organizations, maintaining regional and global capacity to rapidly identify and deploy qualified emergency response personnel and supporting country-level contingency planning.

Job Overview

The People and Culture Director (P&C) will transform the way the IRC Emergency Unit identifies, recruits, retains and develops a highly skilled, diverse team of emergency specialists that launch lifesaving programming within the world's worst crisis environments. IRC's global 2020 strategy and global HR strategy will serve as the context for the P&C Director's focus, with a mandate to ensure immediate impact within emergency settings. S/he will occasionally deploy to oversee or lead the process of scaling up teams within large scale and high-profile emergencies. The P&C Director will be a member of the Emergency Unit Senior Management Team, and serve as a trusted counsel to the Emergency Unit Director.

Major Responsibilities

The People and Culture Director will work closely with the Emergency Director to transform the IRC's approach to people and culture in emergencies in five key areas:

1 Set the Agenda for People and Culture in Emergencies. Lead the development of people and culture strategies in the areas of workforce planning, recruitment, performance improvement, capacity strengthening, diversity and inclusion, employee engagement and staff care to ensure IRC attracts, inspires and receives stellar performance from the best people in the humanitarian sector. Establish, implement and evaluate work plans and associated key indicators to ensure successful strategy delivery. 2 Attract and acquire amazing people. Overhaul the way in which the IRC identifies, selects and hires the best and most promising talent the IRC and wider humanitarian sector has to offer. Implement structured, effective and cutting-edge selection processes to ensure IRC's emergency teams are diverse in skill, experience and profile. Design and implement a program to attract, acquire and develop post-graduate professionals into IRC emergency workforce. Monitor and refine IRC's approach to onboarding new emergency staff, ensuring that all new colleagues receive periodic refresher training on IRC systems, including the IRC Way and the Emergency Roadmap. Periodically evaluate and refine IRC's approach to compensation, including but not limited to salary and benefits for emergency staff working both at the global and new country response location level. 3 Foster a culture in which people are supported to excel and are recognized for their achievements. Design and deliver high-quality capacity strengthening and professional development programs for all Emergency staff, ensuring coherence with the existing, successful Emergency Preparedness Program. Design and implement a program to cultivate staff retention and internal mobility through career path planning, mentoring and formal job coaching. Review, refine, design and encourage the use of staff care programs across the IRC's emergency workforce. Provide counsel to Emergency SMT members to co-create space for inclusion initiatives that genuinely encourage a diversity of opinions, and a meaningful forum for listening and collaboration across function, hierarchy and geography. Support and develop fledgling workforce recognition programs so as to ensure great performance is celebrated and learnt from. Working with the Deputy Director, design, organize and host the annual Emergency Unit conference. 4 Reinforce and decentralize HR best practice systems into emergency responses. Working closely with the Human Resource Unit refine and oversee the implementation of IRC Global HR policies, systems, standards, initiatives, and measurement methodologies; ensuring adaption and documentation in compliance with local labor law, and to the needs of emergencies where the super-ordinate goal is saving lives. Support and empower ERT HR Coordinators and HR Focal Points in emergency country programs to leverage emergency HR policies and practices to ensure timely and responsive HR service delivery to response programs. Bring a problem-solving approach that balances a commitment to policy and compliance adherence with the Emergency Unit mandate.Install measurement and evaluation systems and metrics to highlight success and identify areas of development. 5 Build and manage a world class Emergency Human Resources management team.Establish and execute a plan to build a high performing team of HR practitioners that will provide comprehensive HR and employee relations services to the IRC Emergency Unit, including the ERT, and deploy to emergencies to launch and support critical HR functions. Collaborate with Emergency Unit SMT members to acquire funding to realize and maintain this workforce planning. Provide technical supervision to the ERT HR Coordinators as they deploy into emergencies. Deploy to large scale emergency response locations to monitor HR function performance. Deploy to select high-profile emergency locations to lead the HR function during the first month of operations.

Key Working Relationships:

Position Reports to: This position is in a matrix management and equally reports to Director of Emergency Unit and Chief HR Officer.

Position directly supervises: ERT HR Coordinators and new emergency HR Country Leads

Works closely with: Emergency Unit Deputy Directors, Emergency Unit SMT Members, Senior Deployment Coordinator, ERT Field Directors, Headquarters and Regional Human Resources teams

Requirements:

The IRC is seeking a special candidate to fulfill this critical role charged with transforming the way IRC values and empowers its people during emergencies. The successful candidate will bring a background working in a start-up or rapid growth business environment where people are the competitive advantage. They will have creative problem-solving skills and not be afraid to propose practices new to the IRC and humanitarian industry writ large. They will bring both a passion for humanitarian aid delivery, but also tangible skills at delivering simple human centered solutions that are functional within the chaos of emergency response working environments. Specifically, the successful candidate will bring:

• Master's Degree in Human Resources, International Development, International Law, Organizational Development or related fieldideal or Bachelor's Degree and ideally advanced professional certification in human resource management (SPHR, GPHR, CIPD or other HR professional certification)
• Minimum8-10 years of experience in human resources management including a minimum 3 years in conflict/emergency locations
• Demonstrated success as a HR generalist supporting employee groups of 500+ employees in multiple locations within global environment required; experience working in a large INGO, multinational organization or company
• Demonstrated ability to identify, recommend and implement best practice approaches that deliver rapid, consistent, high-quality HR management and service provision in an emergency environment
• Proven abilities to effectively work with local legal counsel and government departments (Ministry of Labor, Immigration, etc.) to rapidly identify host country legal requirements, negotiate approvals and constructively resolve HR legal issues.Experience in international HR supporting expatriate and national staff in a complex legal and organizational framework.
• Strong collaborator with effective interpersonal and analytical skills who is able to work seamlessly across countries, cultures, and organizational units required.
• Demonstrated ability to work, manage, and meet competing deadlines in a fast-paced, high volume environment and on deadline; aptitude for problem solving and decision making needed
• Superb written and verbal communication skills required. Bilingual French/English highly preferred with Arabic skills a real advantage.

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