Background

The People Performance Unit (PPU) falls part of the Office of Human Resources (OHR) and exists to provide substantive leadership to the development and implementation of the UNDP-wide approaches and strategies aimed at creating a positive employee experience and maintaining a safe, respectful and enabling working environment that enables personnel engagement, productivity and performance.  More specifically, the team leads and provides advice on matters related to employee experience and engagement, diversity and inclusion in the workplace, duty of care with a focus on occupational safety, health and wellbeing (OSHW), dealing with sexual misconduct in the workplace, and individual performance management and its linkages with the broader organizational performance. 

To increase its capacity to respond to the psychosocial and mental health care needs of its personnel during crisis and emergencies, foster a healthy working environment, and expand psychosocial support to country offices, a dedicated roster of experts is being developed under the UNDP’s GPN/Experts Roster for Rapid Response (GPN/ExpRes Roster), comprising of vetted capable and qualified mental health professionals who can be called upon as International Consultants (ICs) to provide mental health and psychosocial support to UNDP personnel during emergency/crisis, with a particular focus on the following areas:

  • Psychosocial risk assessment and design and deliver appropriate response measures
  • Individual and group counselling
  • Identification and follow up on critical incident stress cases among UNDP staff, including the provision of psychological first aid, assessment, and referral, in coordination with the OHR Wellbeing team, facilitating joint case management as necessary;
  • Training sessions and awareness activities on stress, mental health, workplace wellbeing and other matters related to the psychosocial health of personnel
  • Liaising with the counselling resources in the countries where missions are conducted, including the members of the UN Staff/Stress Counsellors Group (UNSSCG) and other local/regional mental health professionals/ resources outside the UN system, e.g. NGOs, private mental health practitioners.
  • Technical advice to managers on how to support well-being of staff and teams as to encourage individual and team resilience in emergency/crisis

A screening procedure will be applied to select the prospective applicants to be registered in the Roster. Retention in the Roster of selected experts will be contingent on continuous delivery of satisfactory services

The GPN/ExpRes Roster is a recruitment and deployment mechanism which maintains technically vetted consultants across 30 profiles and 202 sub-profiles to support the work of UNDP Country Offices/units and other UNDP partner agencies.

Duties and Responsibilities

Selection of candidates will be done by the OHR Wellbeing Team in close collaboration with the Crisis Bureau and the management of the relevant Country Office or Bureau. Responsibility for management, contracting and payment of evaluators will be held by the program or policy units at the Country Office, Regional or Headquarters level.

The ICs will be assigned to provide a full range of psychosocial support services. In cases where there is a national consultant (NC) as part of the team, the IC will act as a team leader. Specific reporting and working relationships will be specified at the time of contracting for a specific assignment. Detailed Terms of Reference (TOR) with relevant annexes and additional guidance will be provided for each assignment.

For each assignment, expected tasks and deliverables may include but not be limited to:

  • Psychosocial risk assessment report
  • Training/workshops reports
  • Records of individual cases in the confidential electronic case management system in accordance with the UN Confidentiality Guidelines for Staff/Stress Counsellors
  • End of assignment report

The exact timing, due dates and guidance for each deliverable will be outlined in each assignment-specific TOR.

Working Arrangements:

  • Candidates successfully selected through a technical criteria review will be included in the UNDPGPN/ExpRes Roster for a period of up to three (3) years once roster is approved;
  • The level of work requirements will vary according to each individual assignment (including whether or not travel is required);
  • Consultants will be home-based with possible mission travel, depending on the assignment;
  • UNDP does not warrant that any quantity of services will be purchased during the term of entry into the Roster as this will depend on forthcoming needs and performance appraisals;
  • Entry into the Roster is non-exclusive (i.e. it does not prohibit UNDP from sourcing expertise from other rosters, entities, or individuals).
  • The final nature and scope of each assignment will vary and will focus on particular aspects of this Terms of Reference (TOR). Such details will be included in a separate TOR for each specific assignment;
  • The financial proposal will specify only the all-inclusive daily fee and payments will be made to the consultant based on number of days worked payable against assigned deliverables.  Such fee would be the ceiling amount.
  • The Consultant will be responsible for providing her/his own working station (i.e. laptop, internet, phone, scanner/printer, software, etc.) and must have access to reliable internet connection;
  • Given the global consultations to be undertaken during his/her assignment, the consultant is expected to be reasonably flexible with his/her availability for such consultations taking into consideration different time zones where applicable;
  • Payments will be made as specified in the actual contract upon confirmation of UNDP on delivering on the contract obligations in a satisfactory manner and as per specified due dates.

Competencies

Integrity:

  • Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
  • Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
  • Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
  • Treats all people fairly without favoritism;
  • Fulfils all obligations to gender sensitivity and zero tolerance for sexual harassment.

Communication:

  • Speaks and writes clearly and effectively;
  • Listens to others, correctly interprets messages from others and responds appropriately;
  • Asks questions to clarify, and exhibits interest in having two-way communication;
  • Tailors language, tone, style and format to match the audience;
  • Demonstrates openness in sharing information and keeping people informed.

Professionalism:

  • Demonstrates professional competence and mastery of subject matter;
  • Conscientious and efficient in meeting commitments, observing deadlines and achieving results;
  • Motivated by professional rather than personal concerns;
  • Shows persistence when faced with difficult problems or challenges;
  • Capable of working in a high-pressure environment, managing many tasks simultaneously;
  • Excellent analytical and organizational skills;
  • Exercises the highest level of responsibility and able to handle confidential and politically sensitive issues in a responsible and mature manner.

Teamwork:

  • Works well in a team to advance the priorities of the assignment and UNDP as a whole;
  • Projects a positive image and is ready to take on a wide range of tasks;
  • Focuses on results for the client;
  • Welcomes constructive feedback.

Client Orientation and Communication:

  • Good interpersonal and networking skills, ability to establish and maintain effective working relations, supports and encourages open communication in the team, and facilitates team work;
  • Ability to communicate verbally and in writing with a wide range of stakeholders, in a manner which is courteous and professional at all times, employing an appropriate level of formality and diplomacy;
  • Ability to follow instructions accurately and also to work under minimum supervision.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

  • Advanced Degree in Clinical Psychology, Counselling Psychology or Clinical Social Work  (Masters degree or Doctorate-level education) OR Medical degree (MD) with completed specialization in Psychiatry.
  • A license to practice as a Psychiatrist, Psychologist, Clinical Psychologist, Counselling Psychologist or license to provide mental health services by a certified body in country (i.e. psychological council or medical council or equivalent).

Experience:

  • At least 5 years of professional experience psychological counselling and/or psychotherapy with Graduate degree; or 4 years relevant experience with Doctorate degree  (Max 20 points)
  • Demonstrated experience in critical incident interventions and/or emergency psychology/psychiatry and case management (Max 30 points). Experience in the provision of online therapy/counselling will be an asset;
  • Additional certification, training and or experience in a range of related related fields, such as alcohol/substance abuse, Psychological First Aid (PFA), trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy, cognitive processing, EMDR, assessment of suicide risk (Max 20 points)
  • Demonstrated communication and training skills (Max 10 points). Experience in providing remote training sessions/workshops would be considered an asset;
  • At least 2 years of experience working with international organizations (Max 10 points) or INGOs. Experience with the United Nations system and/or emergency contexts will be considered an asset;

Language:

  • Excellent oral and written communication skills in English language -Good command of other languages (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese) is an advantage. (max. 10 points);

Evaluation method and inclusion in roster:

  • Only those applications which are responsive and compliant will be evaluated;
  • The technical criteria (education, experience, language will be based on a maximum 100 points;
  • Candidates scoring 70 points or higher from the review of the education, experience and languages will be considered for the roster.

Documentation to be submitted:

  • Candidates must clearly indicate in a cover/motivation letter the following:
    1. TECHNICAL EXPERIENCE in psychological counselling and/or psychotherapy.
    2. TECHNICAL AREAS: the candidate has specialized expertise in one or more of the following areas:

 

  • Psychological counselling   
  • Emergency psychology/disaster mental health/critical incident intervention or individual/group trauma interventions
  • Treatment and case management of alcohol/substance misuse
  • Psychosocial Risk Assessment
  • Suicide Risk Assessment
  • Design and delivery of training/workshops and psychoeducation

 

  1. REGION(S) the candidate has experience working in: a) Latin America & Caribbean; b) Africa; c) Arab States; d) Eastern Europe & CIS; e) Asia & Pacific; f) Global
  • Applicants must submit a P11 or CV including Education/Qualification, Professional Certification, Employment Records /Experience;
  • Applicants must submit or provide links to two writing samples of past evaluations;
  • Applicants must reply to the mandatory questions asked by the system when submitting the application;
  • Applicants must submit a duly completed and signed Annex II Offeror´s letter to UNDP confirming interest and availability for the Roster to be downloaded from the UNDP procurement site.  Such fee would be the ceiling amount.

Kindly note you can upload only one document to this application (scan all documents in one single PDF file to attach). Incomplete applications will not be considered.

UNDP Personal History form (P11):

http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/corporate/Careers/P11_Personal_history_form.doc.

General Conditions of Contract for the ICs:

https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fprocurement-notices.undp.org%2Fview_file.cfm%3Fdoc_id%3D22291&data=04%7C01%7Cjayati.das%40undp.org%7Cb7ab326af0b64f33371508d9ed86e30f%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C0%7C637801985850393679%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=wevxT0reUxusHIjQsDkw5NMihXYFF5JpslR1ByBHODs%3D&reserved=0

Annex II Offeror´s letter to UNDP confirming interest and availability for the Individual Contractor (IC) assignment