Background information:

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

As part of the UN System-wide investments, and leveraging UN Women’s three-pronged mandate—supporting strengthened global norms and standards; promoting effective coordination, coherence and commitment across the UN System towards gender equality; and supporting Member States to translate global norms and standards into national policies and action—the? UN Women’s global Strategic Plan 2018-2021 commits to increased national-level knowledge and strengthened national systems to monitor international, regional and national commitments to Gender equality and the empowerment of women.

Introduction:

Staff retreat is an essential organizational tool that allows peers to participate in group activities, which rely on team-work. In addition, it promotes effective workplace communication and interaction, mutual respect, reliability and an overall friendly working environment. From institutional point of view, staff retreat is a great opportunity to rethink existing strategies and practices, focus on long-term priorities, aims and objectives, and brainstorm current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.?

In line with the preparations of new strategy by the UN Women Kazakhstan Country Office (hereinafter “UN Women Kazakhstan”) and the current COVID-19 Pandemic outbreak, and since the UN Women team is telecommunicating from their residences, it was proposed by UN Women to set a Working Group to prepare the first ever virtual retreat.

During the e-retreat, team members from two geographical offices in Almaty and Nur-Sultan will be brought together.

It is planned that the UN Women annual retreat will provide all colleagues the opportunity to focus on key organizational and individual strategic and development issues, share and exchanges ideas with each other about their concerns, strengths and general issues of the office for the objective of enhancing their soft skills and sprit of the work environment.? Deliberations during the brainstorming of strategic priorities would be used for design of a new Strategic Note to guide the UN Women work in Kazakhstan during the next 5 years.

The UN Women Kazakhstan is currently encompassing 18 personnel staff with various backgrounds who will be participating in the retreat.

UN Women Kazakhstan intends to hire a consultant to assist with ensuring a proper preparations and facilitation of the retreat and prepare the retreat report, including list of follow up actions.

Objectives:

The facilitator will design and run the virtual retreat sessions utilizing a creative, dynamic and entertaining approach to encourage self-reflection, openness and communication between personnel, ensuring that newcomers are pro-actively engaged.? The retreat’s objectives:

1. Addressing at the retreat and proposing a mechanism/working method to ensure the implementation of measures identified as priorities regarding leadership, communications, trust and inter-personal issues;
2. Strengthening the team spirit among colleagues through innovation, teambuilding and maintaining a conducive working environment (stress management, ethics in the workplace and trust-building).
3. Brainstorm how to alight UN women strategy and priorities with the country’s strategy and priorities and ensure meaningful partnerships with the key internal and external stakeholders, using risk management approach that utilizes SMART targeting instruments.

The main identified areas that need improvement and consideration in the retreat design and structure are as follows:

1. Team building, collaborative spirit and internal communication

• Promoting a culture of continuous learning new things from each other;
• Creating a variety of skills, knowledge and strengths talent pool;
• Development of employee’s skills and supporting creativity and thinking out of box;
• Understanding the diversity and differences of each other and to know how to leverage those differences;
• Entrusting people to share information, challenges, feedback, or anything that will help to make work more effective;
• Improving the engagement of employee in decision making;
• Creating a sense of ownership and synergy in the team.

2. Empowerment of staff:

• To do challenging and interesting work;
• A good use of staff’s skills and abilities;
• Help team members to better know each other: integrating newcomers and reenergizing longer serving staff and benefiting from their expertise and historic memory;
• Support staff’s desire for professional development and learning;
• Providing the tools and resources for staff to do their job well;
• Supportive approach of the management team to new ideas, suggestions and concerns;
• Giving authority to staff to make relevant decisions that enable them to do their job effectively.

3. Ethics & Ethical Behavior

• Clearly communicate the importance of ethics by the management team;
• Creating a fair environment where staff feel comfortable to report the misconduct;
• Accountability of people at all levels for ethical behaviour;
• Acting with honesty and integrity by all staff and specially the management team when they must choose between achieving results and "doing the right thing.

4. Openness & Trust:

• Being able to raise workplace issues and concerns with each other without fear of negative reaction;
• Promoting and enabling the environment of openness and trust by the management team and each team member;
• Openly and honestly communication among staff.

5. Leadership:

• The management team acts with honesty and integrity;
• The management team provides effective direction and leadership;
• The management team makes sure that policies and procedures are applied consistently to all staff, and does not play favourites;
• The managers “lead by example” in terms of cross team and cross-functional cooperation;
• The management team acts in ways consistent with what they say;
• The management team effectively manages conflicts and grievances in the office.

6. Flexibility

• Using flexible/telecommuting working arrangements, mechanisms and tools for managing individual’s work (e.g., increasing the efficiency) and personal responsibilities;
• To maintain a healthy balance between work-related and personal responsibilities;
• Fair distribution of workload in the office.

7. Performance Management

• Receiving effective feedback from supervisors for performance improvement;
• Recognition of excellent performance at all levels in the office;
• Accountability of all employee for results;
• Taking an appropriate action in case of any performance issue;
• Encourage learning and doing news things, creativity.

8. Common Vision and Strategic Planning

• SWOP analysis;
• Country’s priorities and needs in the area of gender equality and women empowerment and UN Women role;
• Brainstorm on strategies to implement UN Women mandate of normative support, UN system coordination and operational activities for results;
• Pro-actively, out of box and creative ways to expand internal and external partnerships and stakeholders networks;
• Use strategic communications to achieve programmatic results;
• Best practices and lessons learned (how to work differently and more efficiently);
• Resource mobilization.

Date(s) and duration of the retreat:

The retreat is expected to be held in end of February, beginning of March 2021. The exact date(s) of the retreat will be agreed upon jointly by UN Women and the facilitator.?

The contract is expected to commence in beginning of March 2021 and come to the end on the satisfactory completion of the services and not later than end-March 2021.

The facilitator is expected to undertake a three-day virtual retreat (according to his/her plan) on a suitable online platform agreed with UN Women.

Direct Supervision:

The tasks will be performed under the direct supervision of the UN Women Representative. The Representative will nominate a focal point/s from the Retreat Working Group to the facilitator for further follow ups and day-to-day contact.

Outputs/Deliverables:

The facilitator is expected to recommend the duration of the virtual retreat (maximum 4 hours per day for 4 days) according to the areas elaborated above and design the virtual retreat sessions accordingly.

The assignment includes the preparatory work, the virtual retreat itself and the final evaluation (report) of the virtual retreat. The followings are expected outputs and deliverables:

• Submit the plan and methodologies designed for conducting the virtual retreat according to the areas elaborated in the objective section.
• Submit a final agenda and detailed plan including details of exercises/activities in each session as well as a list of required tools, facilities and stationery for each session before the date(s) of the virtual retreat;
• Develop a pre- and post-retreat survey that would reflect the overall satisfaction rate, comments and suggestions of staff, with a analysis of the survey findings submitted to UN Women not later than one week after the retreat;
• Facilitate a three-day virtual retreat on agreed date(s) on a suitable online platform agreed with UN Women;
• Submit the final report (English) to UN Women including observations and recommendations within two weeks after conducting the retreat.

Required Qualifications:

• Education: University degree;
• Experience: Minimum five years of professional experience is required. Applicant should have at least 3 similar experiences of facilitating retreats for the UN entities, or international organizations or large commercial companies.
• Skills: Applicant should have strong analytical and coaching skills, knowledge or people’s psychology, emotional intelligence, strategic communications.? Knowledge of UN or UN Women operations is an asset.
• Language Requirements: Fluency in written and spoken English and Russian is required. The retreat will be conducted in a mixed modality both in English and Russian.? Knowledge of Kazakh language is an asset. 

Application Process

The application should include:

• Personal History Form (P-11 form) - including past experience in similar assignments; can be downloaded at http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment, a signed copy should be submitted;
• Financial Proposal: Specify a total lump sum amount in Kazakhstan tenge for the tasks specified in this Terms of Reference. The financial proposal shall include a breakdown of this lump sum amount (per deliverable, all travel costs, per diem any other possible costs as relevant);?
• Technical proposal describing how the expected assignment will be performed. The technical proposal should also include supporting materials to learn about candidate’s experience and skills.

Candidates should have the ability to quickly produce degree certificates and medical certification (of good health) should they be short-listed in consideration of the consultancy post.

Evaluation process

Candidates will be evaluated using a cumulative analysis method taking into consideration the combination of qualifications and financial proposal.

Technical Evaluation (70%) – max. 700 points:

Candidates that receive at least 490 points in the technical evaluation would be considered for financial evaluation. The hiring manager may choose to carry out interviews to ensure technical ability in addition to the technical/financial evaluation.

Financial Evaluation (30%) – max. 300 points:

The maximum number of points assigned to the financial proposal is allocated to the lowest price proposal. All other price proposals receive points in inverse proportion. A suggested formula is as follows:

p = 300 (µ/z)

Using the following values:

p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated

µ = price of the lowest priced proposal

z = price of the proposal being evaluated

Only candidates who have passed the preliminary selection will be informed.

Kindly note, that the system will only allow one attachment, hence all supporting document

e.g. P11, CV must be scanned as one attachment. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.

Qualified women and members of minorities are encouraged to apply. UN Women applies a fair and transparent selection process that would take into account the competencies/skills of the applicants as well as their financial proposals. Due to the large number of applications received, UN Women will inform only the successful candidate about the outcome or status of the selection process.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS ANNOUNCEMENT IS FOR INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL CONSULTANT.