Background

The Agenda for Change (AOC) that was launched by the UNDP Administrator in 2011 aims to support the creation of a more productive, flexible, and results-oriented organization within a culture of excellence and accountability for achieving results. It is for this purpose that human resources management has been identified for reform, with simplicity, transparency of policies, and timeliness of services as the common threads.

The AOC requires the implementation of a People Capability Strategy that will help UNDP develop a workforce to meet the demands of an increasingly complex development environment.

Under the supervision of the Chief, Strategic Planning Unit (SPU), OHR, and in the context of the PCS, the Workforce Planning Specialist develops comprehensive and higher level views, systems, and tools for assessing both qualitatively and quantitatively, country office demand for talent across all contract types. Furthermore, s/he applies business process re-engineering principles to provide data analysis on workforce statistics, forecast demand, elaborate integrated workforce plans, and align country office, regional/policy centres, and HQ talent capabilities with strategic priorities and annual business plan requirements.

In addition, the incumbent supports the Integrated Talent Management function by analysing HR trends and projecting information that facilitates decision making, and by formulating a comprehensive succession planning system that fills in identified talent gaps for required expertise.

The Workforce Planning Specialist has frequent contacts and establishes lasting strategic partnerships with the Integrated Talent Management Unit, Policy & Advisory Services Unit, HRM Development & Advisory Services Unit and Staff Administrative Services (SAS), the Office of Planning & Budget (OPB) and the Office of Information Systems and Technology (OIST).

Duties and Responsibilities

Summary of key functions:
 
Under the guidance and leadership of the Chief of SPU, serves as principal advisor on all workforce matters, including emerging workforce trends
  • Development of strategy and delivery of advisory services.
  • Knowledge management; establishment of partnerships.
  • Development of systems, processes, and tools.
  • Workforce planning.
  • Unit management.
Development of Strategy and Delivery of Advisory Services
  • Recommends HR strategies to address potential problem areas or to take advantage of strategic opportunities in concert with corporate priorities.
  • Designs and implements effective workforce planning strategies; provides advice to senior management and to other units in OHR on workforce planning to ensure a sufficient number of staff is available to meet organizational objectives as well as on key internal and external workforce trends that could have high impact on senior management staffing decisions.
  • Provides substantive inputs in the development of strategies, policies, and systems that will enhance gender balance in UNDP workforce and oversight (recruitment, career advancement / promotion, retention, staff development / career planning, work-life balance).
  • Leads complex custom research and analysis projects related to workforce trends.
  • Works with senior management to develop succession planning metrics.
Knowledge Management and Establishment of Partnerships
  • Serves as a focal point for Workforce Statistics in maintaining up-to-date knowledge of trends and best practices in both public and private sectors.
  • Analyses trends, information, and/or statistical data in monitoring and reporting at the Corporate and donor levels and identifies OHR action required.
  • Analyses data trends and advises on constraints and opportunities for recruitment, staff development, retention, and staff turnover.
  • Develops workforce scenario recommendations based on realistic assumptions for attrition, recruitment, and promotion to meet annual and longer term organizational requirements.
  • Collaborate with OHR Units, other BoM Units, the Operations & Programme Group (OPG) and the Executive Group (EG) by providing analysis and forecast of UNDP’s workforce requirements.
  • Creation, monitoring and evaluation of workforce analytics dashboards to quickly identify competency strengths, weaknesses, and gaps.
  • Prepares and presents regular and ad hoc workforce reports, focusing on current status and foreseeable trends and patterns.
  • Trains and educates clients on the use and understanding of HR metrics and statistics Provides support to clients who utilize reporting metrics, systems, and tools.
  • Establishes strategic partnerships with OHR and other units in BoM.
  • Consistently works to understand the organization, its structure, and challenges to ensure the relevance and alignment of the systems and the data requests.
Development of Systems, Processes, and Tools
  • Identifies and develops HR metrics, aligned with organizational needs and goals.
  • Designs systems, processes, tools, and instruments for workforce planning, focusing on simplification and automation.
  • Identifies opportunities to improve the use of the ERP (Atlas) by suggesting enhancements of the system’s functionality and improving the range and quality of data for all categories in the workforce.
  • Analyses reports and advises on constraints and opportunities for recruitment, staff development, retention, and staff turnover.
  • Develops workforce scenario recommendations, based on realistic assumptions for attrition, recruitment, and promotion, to meet annual and longer term organizational requirements.
  • In concert with the Integrated Talent Management Unit, establishes the annual promotion exercise for D2’s, tracks global vacancy rates and vacancy lead times.
  • Drafts the annual presentation to the Senior Managers Team (SMT), providing analysis and forecast of UNDP’s workforce requirements.
Workforce planning
  • Conducts a quantitative analysis of the current global workforce by grade, function, key demographics, competencies, bureau/office and other indicators. Interprets the data and identifies the trends and patterns.
  • Plans and implements UNDP’s annual and four-year workforce planning of global and strategic staffing requirements by number, function, demographics, and competencies based on inputs from other OHR Units, provides inputs on realistic position structure options, recent historical trends, and information gathered from relevant databases.
  • Develops, recommends, regularly monitors, and reports on strategies, staffing requirements, and results for achieving workforce diversity, including gender and geographic balance; recommends mid-term adjustments to HR levers, to ensure staffing requirements are met.
  • Monitors, reports, and publishes country office and HQ compliance with corporate priorities.
  • Creates a model for tracking of individual performance and skills compared to peers, identification of the highest priority individuals for performance coaching, and the ability to efficiently assess a course of action for coaching at the individual level.
Unit management
  • Manages UNDP’s IT resources with integrity, transparency, and equity.
  • Practices good team management by including and involving unit members in the planning and implementation of the unit’s work plan and sharing expertise and experience within the unit.
  • Manages content by ensuring (1) prescriptive content within functional area is continuously updated and available through the Intranet; (2) best practices are continuously identified, documented, and made available to clients and peers, through the Intranet; (3) appropriate and up-to-date information and learning tools are available.
  • Manages information technology through leveraging the tools available for improved business results, simplification of transaction and reporting processes, and improved client services, as well as leveraging the Intranet’s functionality for content management, information provision, and learning.
  • Manages matrix relationships/partnerships by ensuring the handover and consultation of products/results within the prepared and executed, as well as effective and efficient, management of a multitude of partnerships with external actors and clients.

Competencies

Functional competencies
 
Building Strategic Partnerships
Identifying and building partnerships
  • Effectively networks with partners seizing opportunities to build strategic alliances relevant to UNDP’s mandate and strategic agenda.
  • Displays initiative, sets challenging outputs for him/herself and willingly accepts new work assignments.
  • Takes responsibility for achieving agreed outputs within set deadlines and strives until successful outputs are achieved.
Promoting Organizational Learning and Knowledge Sharing
Developing tools and mechanisms
  • Makes the case for innovative ideas documenting successes and building them into the design of new approaches.
  • Identifies new approaches and strategies that promote the use of tools and mechanisms.
  • Develops and/or participates in the development of tools and mechanisms, including identifying new approaches to promote individual and organizational learning and knowledge sharing using formal and informal methodologies.
Job Knowledge and Technical Expertise
In-depth knowledge of the Subject-matter
  • Understands more advanced aspects of primary area of specialization as well as the fundamental concepts of related disciplines.
  • Serves as internal consultant in the area of expertise and shares knowledge with staff.
  • Continues to seek new and improved methods and systems for accomplishing the work of the unit.
  • Keeps abreast of new developments in area of professional discipline and job knowledge and seeks to develop him/herself professionally.
  • Demonstrates comprehensive knowledge of information technology and applies it in work assignments.
Promoting Organizational Change and Development
Assisting the individuals to cope with change
  • Develops communications and programmes to assist business units in their adaptation to changing environment.
  • Provides counselling and coaching to colleagues who are dealing with change. Assists in the development of policies, communications, and change strategies.
  • Performs appropriate work analysis and assists in redesign to establish clear standards for implementation.
Strategic Alignment of Management Practice
Adapting best practice and building capacity
  • Knows the objectives and outputs of organizational units and their human resource, financial and technological capacities and links them to appropriate management policies and services.
  • Forms partnerships with managers and staff providing advice and solutions that integrate various management areas to enable them to meet their needs.
  • Adapts best management practices to the requirements of the organization and/or organizational units to facilitate the achievement of strategic objectives.
Design and Implementation of Management Systems
Designing and implementing management system
  • Carries out research into existing systems to identify best practice and make recommendations to management on applicability to UNDP.
  • Refine and enhances existing systems by leading and coordinating systems development.
  • Makes recommendations regarding design or operation of systems or programmes within organizational units.
  • Identifies and recommends remedial measures to address problems in systems design or implementation.
  • Conducts system assessment to improve development of systems design and operation.
Client Orientation
Contributing to positive outcomes for the client
  • Anticipates client needs.
  • Works towards creating an enabling environment for a smooth relationship between the clients and service provider.
  • Demonstrates understanding of client’s perspective.
  • Keeps the client informed of problems or delays in the provision of services.
  • Uses discretion and flexibility in interpreting rules in order to meet client needs and achieve organizational goals more effectively.
  • Solicits feedback on service provision and quality.
Promoting Accountability and Results-based Management
Input to the development of standards and policies
  • Provides inputs to the development of organizational standards for accountability and results-based management.
  • Undertakes ad hoc analysis of issues emanating from policy application reviews.
Core competencies
  • Ethics and Values: Promotes Ethics and Integrity / Creates Organizational Precedents.
  • Organizational Awareness: Builds support and political acumen.
  • Developing and Empowering People / Coaching and Mentoring: Builds staff competence; creates an environment of creativity and innovation.
  • Working in Teams: Builds and promotes effective teams.
  • Communicating Information and Ideas: Creates and promotes an enabling environment for open communication.
  • Self-management / Emotional Intelligence: Creates an emotionally intelligent organization.
  • Conflict Management / Negotiating and Resolving Disagreements: Leverages conflict in the interest of UNDP and sets standards.
  • Knowledge Sharing / Continuous Learning: Shares knowledge across the organization and builds a culture of knowledge sharing and learning.
  • Appropriate and Transparent Decision Making: Fair and transparent decision making; calculated risk-taking.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

  • An advanced degree in Human Resources or Public Administration or relevant Social Sciences.

 Experience:

  • Minimum of 7 years related and practical experience in HR data management, in international organizations or the public sector.
  • Proven ability to strategically frame workforce statistics, data and trends analysis, forecasting needs, and developing workforce plans. Technical and functional familiarity with data management in ERP systems.
  • Outstanding writing and presentation skills.
  • Ability to work in high pressure situations.
  • Proven ability to develop comprehensive and higher level views, systems, and tools for assessing both qualitatively and quantitatively, country office demand for talent across all contract types.
  • Experience in and knowledge of the UN System is an advantage.

Language Requirements:

  • Fluency in English. Working knowledge of other UN language is an advantage.