Background

UN City in Copenhagen is a diverse working place hosting more than 2,000 UN staff originating from 100 countries, employed in 11 UN agencies.  UN City is one of the major global hubs of the UN.

A Health and Wellbeing Strategy was developed for UN City in 2019, to aspire to a healthy workplace. To further the work to ensure a good workplace, UN City plans to develop a comprehensive strategy with an action plan to ensure gender equality and inclusion, and to address discrimination and racism in the workplace. This strategy will be called UN City Inclusive Workplace Strategy, with the subtitle ‘Ensuring a safe, inclusive, and gender equal workplace free of racism, discrimination, and harassment’. The Inclusive Workplace Strategy (IWS) will complement and not overlap agency specific strategies, but rather address the working life in UN City related to issues that applies to all staff no matter UN agency affiliation and contracting arrangements. It will form an addition to the Health and Wellbeing Strategy. 

The strategy will include concrete proposed actions for improvement on issues that UN City staff prioritise. This workplan will guide the Operations Management Team on matters of priority going forward including but not limited to allocation of workplace-related funds, and it will allow the UN Country Team to hold itself accountable for delivering on key priority issues of importance across the UN family. 

Under the overall guidance of the UN City Common Services management, and in close collaboration with the IWC Reference Group (to be established for this purpose), a UN City Common Services will hire a consultant for a total of 35 working days over a period of 3 months starting on 15 October.

The purpose of the consultancy is to develop an Inclusive Workplace Strategy with the objective of ensuring that UN City has a working environment that feels safe and inclusive, is gender equal and free of discrimination, racism and harassment.

Duties and Responsibilities

Review existing materials

1. Develop a detailed workplan for the consultancy addressing each of the areas covered by the scope of work, and the working method for each of the tasks. The workplan will need to be approved by the hiring manager.
2. Review existing agency specific and UN City strategies, evaluations/studies, and agency specific organisational surveys, as well as a couple of examples of other workplace strategies existing in the UN system to ensure that the UN City Inclusive Workplace Strategy (IWS) build on existing platforms, materials and strategies while cognizant of lessons learned from similar processes elsewhere in the UN system. Material to be provided by the Reference Group.

Conduct an organizational and cultural survey

1. Conduct focus group interviews and use those as inspiration and inputs for drafting an organizational and cultural survey for UN City for review by and discussion with the HR group, and discussion with the Reference Group and with the OMT
2. Prepare the documents and the survey for the UNCT Chair to send to all UN City staff and give input to a townhall for announcement of the IWS work and discussion of this survey.
3. Analyse results of the organizational and cultural survey and present to the reference group for discussion.

Develop the UN City Inclusive Workplace Strategy and Workplan

1. Draft an outline of the IWS for review and discussion with the reference group
2. Draft the IWS with a workplan for prioritized follow-up, including a separate workplan for addressing racism, and present to OMT for input. The workplan should include recommendations but not specific costing.  
3. Finalise the IWS and present to UNCT
4. Finalise the IWS and present at a townhall

Deliverables:

1. Workplan agreed to and existing materials reviewed (5 working days)
2. Organisational and cultural survey completed (15 working days)
3. UN City IWS finalized (15 days)

Competencies

Functional Competencies

• Proven ability to design and implement relevant and targeted initiatives
• Ability to develop and maintain strong partnerships with a variety of stakeholders and develop inter-institutional coordination and communication mechanisms.

Integrity

• Demonstrate consistency in upholding and promoting the values of the UN in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct.

Professionalism

• Demonstrate professional competence and expert knowledge of the pertinent substantive areas of work.

Required Skills and Experience

• Master’s Degree in Political Science, International Development, or a related field
• Experience working for an international organisation on workplace related and organisational management issues
• Demonstrated experience working on diversity and inclusion
• Demonstrated experience planning and conducting focus group interviews and designing and analysing surveys in multi-cultural and diverse environments.
• Demonstrated analytical experience.
• Excellent rapport in understanding culturally diverse audiences for messaging.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently with a minimum of guidance while seeing consensus, and ability to deliver on target and on time.
• Experience working with the United Nations is an advantage.

Language Requirements:

• Fluency in the English language required, with strong, confident command of both written and oral English.

Application process:

Interested individual consultants must include the following documents when submitting the applications in UNDP job shop (Please note that only 1 (one) file can be uploaded therefore please include all documents in one file):

• Updated CV indicating all past experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional references.
• Brief description of why the individual considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment. Indicate available start date.