Job Title: Regional Operations Manager
About us: For over 90 years, Save the Children has been making a difference in children’s lives in more than 120 countries. 
We are the world’s largest independent child rights organisation, underpinned by a vision in a world in which every child attains the right to survival, protection, development and participation. 
Our mission to inspire breakthroughs in the way the world treats children, and to achieve immediate and lasting change in their lives.

 

Save the Children is an organization for talented people with different backgrounds and perspectives. We are proud that our people are representative of the children we work with and we thrive on our diversity. 
We are an equal opportunity organisation dedicated to our core values of Accountability, Ambition, Collaboration. Creativity and Integrity. 
Our culture is embedded in these values, along with a strong commitment to our Child Safeguarding Protocol, ensuring that all representatives of Save the Children demonstrate the highest standards of behaviour towards children both in their private and professional lives.

Save the Children Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office is looking to recruit for a position of Regional Operations Manager.

Team / Program: East and Southern Africa Regional Programme Operations Team
Location: Nairobi
Grade: TBC
 
Child Safeguarding: Level 3 – the responsibilities of the post may require the post holder to have regular contact with or access to children or young people
 
Role Purpose: As a member of the East and Southern Africa regional office operations team, the Operations Manager acts as a coordinating focal point for operational issues, providing support to designated Country Office (CO) operational delivery across the full spectrum of Save the Children programmes in both development and humanitarian response activities, ensuring effective information flows and assistance in adherence to SCI operations procedures/standards.

The Operations Manager will support CO operations staff in managing development & humanitarian efforts and will provide directional advice to the country programme in concurrence with the Country Director and ESARO team. 
The post-holder will effectively and efficiently support operations systems, processes and activities so that programmes are delivered on time according to organisational strategy, donor requirements and within allocated budgets. 
S/he will take leadership on aspects related to staffing structure and management, awards, security and logistics systems and will play a strategic role in the effective scale up and management of Save the Children development & humanitarian programmes to increase impact and enable positive change for children in the East Africa region.

Scope of Role:
Reports to: East and South Africa Regional Programme Operations Director
Dimensions: Save the Children works in 12 countries in East and Southern Africa (Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi) with a current staff complement of approximately 3500 staff and current expenditure of approximately $300 million each year
Staff directly reporting to this post: Regional Operations Officer
 
Key Areas of Accountability:
To deliver high quality programmes this role provides high level continuous and consistent operational support providing proactive and strategic support at Country Office level that take full account of the breadth of programming needed, and ensuring the coordination of reactive support to Country Office leadership to deal with the range of operational and implementation issues as they occur.
 
Support strategic planning, reporting and capacity strengthening of Save the Children operations across East Africa:
  • Ensure adherence to SCI standards, procedures and agreed processes, including ensuring key country and response deliverables are produced according to agreed schedules and flagging likely delays or issues
  • Support Operational effectiveness and efficiency by ensuring improved ability to monitor the IP Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)
  • Support country operations reviews
  • Ensure coordination and quality of essential standards assessments and Management Improvement Plans , annual planning, quarterly and annual reporting for designated country offices.
  • Support strategy planning and implementation including Country Strategic Plans (CSP), annual planning and reporting, Emergency preparedness plans and response strategy and planning
  • Support the recruitment of operation staffing (both national and international) for country offices.
  • Demonstrate leadership in relation to Save the Children policies and practice with respect to child protection, code of conduct, health and safety, equal opportunities and other relevant policies and procedures.
Programme operations support:
  • Keep an oversight over and provide support to programme implementation in the selected countries in the region, and external factors that may influence the programming context (security environment, natural disasters, political change)
  • Liaise with other key EARO functions – awards, finance, logs, HR, PDQ – to ascertain operational blockages and solutions
  • Ensure implementation and follow up of management decisions and actions agreed between SCI Centre, Regional and Country management teams, across operations and associated departments, including for particular humanitarian responses.
  • Provide coordinated and integrated finance, Awards, safety & security and logistics advisory support to field offices/programmes to enable effective and efficient project implementation according to donor guidelines and Save the Children minimum standards
  • In liaison with regional and country office finance & awards teams ensure the implementation of effective finance and awards management systems.
  • Work with Country Office and Regional and Centre Awards teams to ensure AMS is kept up to date, and that committed funding is made available for Country Programme to use and issues are resolved in a timely fashion.
  • Ensure dissemination of key funding information across members for efficient allocation of appeal and institutional funding.
  • Support implementation of effective safety and security management systems in liaison with the EARO Safety and Security team, ensure that these are updated and revised at regular intervals and that new programmes are built around security considerations
  • Support effective functioning of logistics systems to procure, store and distribute stock, supplies and services for the timely delivery of project objectives, liaising with the EARO Logistics team and Programme Quality team to ensure that programme supply strategies are in place.
  • Work in close collaboration with the Country Office, Regional HR and Global Roster Manager to ensure staff succession planning, and where there are key staffing gaps that these are identified in a timely fashion and support requested with clear terms of reference. Work with Regional HR and TA, HTWGs, and other functions (Finance, Awards, HR, Logs, Media/Comms and Advocacy) to source appropriate staff and work with SCI and Member HR teams to ensure timely deployment /recruitment.
  • Ensure appropriate categorisation of humanitarian needs in the CO, with re-categorisation on an annual basis or when the situation significantly changes. Ensure seed funding requested in a coherent fashion, and work with Humanitarian Director/Senior Advisor and Members to source required funding.
  • Support CO team on designing multi-sector response and recovery strategies, programme plans and programme master budgets, ensuring sufficient operational support for the areas above are included within budgets
  • Support humanitarian response teams so that minimum standards of humanitarian relief are appropriately included in accordance with the Sphere Charter and Red Cross Code of Conduct.
Information management, Organisational Learning
  • Collect and enable information flow and information-sharing, including response strategies, needs assessments, appeal documents, sitreps, media/comms moments, updating OMT and regional operations monitoring information
  • Ensure strong coordination with relevant external stakeholders in country and at regional and international levels, including ensuring participation in clusters/sectoral coordination mechanisms, Humanitarian Country Team and coordination with key external actors such as other INGOs, RCRC Movement, regional and international networks as appropriate
  • Ensure Operations Monitoring Tracker is kept up to date with information provided by the Country Office
  • Organise and chair regular Operations and Member Update calls and organise R/EMG calls as necessary/agreed. Ensure coordination with key members and key technical/functional areas not represented on Operations or Member Update calls.
  • Work closely with the Country Programme to maintain an overview of programme delivery, provide a sounding board for decisions and actions and helping to proactively identify issues that might affect response implementation, flagging these to the Country Director and to Regional Operations Director/Regional Humanitarian Director.
  • During humanitarian responses, keep an oversight of backstopping and surge support / gap fill of critical in-country roles within the operations teams and in particular in the humanitarian responses. In close coordination with the HTWG and the SCI Humanitarian Team, establish and/or confirm the role of each person for technical backstopping, finance and grants leads, HR leads and logistics leads to ensure that operational support is available and that support for adequate staffing is also available Ensure communication of funding opportunities to members
  • Support Country Programme(s) to achieve SC’s humanitarian benchmarks and indicators
  • Ensure appropriate level of support being provided to Country Programme by technical backstops and other operational and support functions at regional or by Centre/member
  • Together with PDQ (Program Development & Quality) teams, take initiative/participate in team lessons learned and planning processes at key stages in program cycle, supporting initiatives in documenting lessons learnt, best practice and case studies to shape in-country strategies and programme approaches, and contribute to broader sector learning
  • Liaise with PDQ teams to support the implementation of accountability mechanisms (including children and youth participation)
Capacity building:
  • Support the delivery of capacity building plans to develop the requisite operational competencies in operational staff
  • Coach and mentor operational staff and link in to wider organisational talent development mechanisms.
  • Design and support emergency preparedness and capacity building support (EPP, ERT etc)
Skills and Behaviours (our Values in Practice)
 
Accountability:
  • Holds self accountable for making decisions, achieving and role modelling Save the Children values
  • Holds the team and partners accountable to deliver on their responsibilities – giving them the freedom to deliver in the best way they see fit, providing the necessary development to improve performance and applying appropriate consequences when results are not achieved
Ambition:
  • Sets ambitious and challenging goals for themselves and their team, takes responsibility for their own personal development and encourages their team to do the same
  • Widely shares their personal vision for Save the Children, engages and motivates others
  • Future orientated, thinks strategically
Collaboration:
  • Approachable, good listener, easy to talk to; builds and maintains effective relationships with colleagues, Members and external partners and supporters
  • Values diversity and different people’s perspectives, able to work cross-culturally.
Creativity:
  • Develops and encourages new and innovative solutions
  • Cuts away bureaucracy and encourages a pragmatic approach
Integrity:
  • Honest, encourages openness and transparency, builds trust and confidence
  • Displays consistent excellent judgement, managing resources efficiently
Qualifications and Experience
  • Extensive program and operations management experience in international development and humanitarian programs, including
  1. Demonstrated ability to set up operational management systems in a large complex programme
  2. Direct experience of delivery of humanitarian programs, in a technical or operational role, in at least 3 different contexts
  3. Senior management role within a complex country programme and/or in a large scale emergency response
  4. Previous experience of managing technical/programme/operations/support teams in large-scale first phase emergency response is essential
  • Knowledge of international humanitarian and development systems, institutions and donors (programmes (including ECHO, DFID and OFDA), and of procedures, accountability frameworks and best practices
  • Demonstrated ability to thrive in a complex, matrix management environment. Highly developed interpersonal and communication skills including influencing, negotiation and coaching.
  • In depth knowledge and experience of logistics systems and requirements in a multi field office, multi programme setting
  • Security management experience across a large programme
  • Substantial training and capacity building experience
  • Cultural sensitive, with highly developed interpersonal and communication skills including influencing, negotiation and coaching.
  • Experience of supporting and developing programmatic staff with different backgrounds and expertise
  • Commitment to Save the Children values.
  • Ability and willingness to change work practices and hours in the event of major emergencies.
  • Willingness to travel in developing countries (varying, but expected to be at least 40% of time).
  • A degree in a relevant field either in relation to development, disaster management, management
How to Apply

Please send a copy of your CV with a cover letter to EA.recruitment@savethechildren.org

Application closes 12th October 2015 at 5:00pm.

We work with children, communities and governments all over the world and we believe in the right person for the job regardless of where you come from and how you identify yourself. We need to keep children safe so our selection process reflects our commitment to ensuring that only those who are suitable to work with children are considered for these posts. All successful applicants will therefore be required to complete a Police Check and must sign onto our Child Safeguarding Policy and organizational Code of Conduct.

 



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