Turkey: CARE is looking for Operations and Resilience Advisor

Job Summary

The Operations and Resilience Advisor (ORA) will advise CARE Turkey, on strategies to work safely within their program environments, maintain accesses to program areas, reduce operational risks faced by staff and develop the capacity of national counterparts in the CARE Turkey SSU. This will be achieved by maintaining a pragmatic and operational posture that enables and supports CARE’s vision and mission in Turkey, whilst fostering an inclusive risk-managed culture for health and safety amongst staff.

This post reports to the Country Director, with close daily interaction and engagement with the Country Director and Senior Management Team, on which s/he is a member. The ORA will directly manage the CARE Turkey SSU.

S/he will manage the ongoing review, development and implementation of the Country Office Risk Management Plan and associated budget.

The Operations and Resilience Advisor will support and maintain safety advisories and operating procedures which are in line with the CARE International Principles. In supporting CARE Turkey to achieve its mission, the ORA will advise management on a range of best practices to reduce operational risk and prepare robust contingency plans for incident and crisis response.

S/he will be responsible for developing the capacity of staff through training to ensure that risk management protocols and procedures are known, understood and followed.

The ORA will be expected to grow and maintain strong network links with key peer collaboration groups and individuals including counterparts in the region to ensure that CARE can maintain access to program areas.

S/he will demonstrate a high level of socio-cultural, political and economic understanding of the context where CARE works. S/he will also develop a solid working knowledge of CARE's programs and have a strong understanding of humanitarian programming approaches.

S/he will be required to travel to operational areas (risk levels permitting), including potentially volatile locations to ensure the provisions of the Risk Management Plan are followed at field level. The ORA will support the development of appropriate localized plans and provide expert technical assistance to field staff where necessary.

Key criteria for success in this post are:

A clear vision and demonstrable leadership qualities, an advanced ability to communicate issues of risk management in a credible and consultative fashion and a management style that engages support and empowers strong decision making. A strong emphasis on this role is the continued development of skills and capacity of colleagues in the SSU.

Responsibilities and Tasks

Job Responsibility #1

Management of the CARE Turkey SSU

• Manage the daily and long-term operations of the CARE Turkey SSU as well as the professional development of members of the SSU per standard CARE HR performance processes.
• Directly manage and supervise SSU staff.
• Oversee the development of Unit work plans and tasks, track and support task completion and ensure a high level of operational performance. Ensure an adequate annual budget is maintained and tracked to support risk management systems country-wide.
• Continuously coordinate across Departments and with Provincial Management teams to ensure positive working relationships are established and maintained and the risk management agenda and priorities are integrated into daily and long-term operations.

Job Responsibility #2

Analysis, Planning and Preparation

• Prepare strategic oversight activity plans for the Country Director and CARE Turkey Senior Management Team (SMT) to include annual operating plans, guidance framework, goals and activities plans.
• Prepare detailed operational activity plans to include weekly and long-term work plans for the SSU, individual capacity development plans, training plans for SSU and non-SSU staff and supporting budgets.
• Develop and maintain a strong contextual understanding of the areas of operations in consultation with program staff, Senior Managers and Country Director.
• Ensure that all risk assessments for CARE Turkey operational locations and Projects are completed at a minimum on an annual basis utilizing the standard CARE risk assessment formats and adequately communicated to relevant CARE Turkey staff.
• Ensure the development of the Turkey Risk Management Plan, using the CARE International template and implement this plan in programming locations.
• Assist the CO to prepare for major critical incidents and crises through contingency plan development and participation in Crisis Management Team training.
• Participate in the selection of any new SSU permanent staff and ensure proper training and orientation plans are conducted.
• Work with program staff in the development of new projects to ensure effective risk mitigation measures and strategies (and required budgets) are incorporated from program design.
• Enable through the development of key networks, access to CARE’s program areas and partner communities.

Job Responsibility #3

Procedures and Protocols:

• Implement and maintain relevant and achievable risk management procedures based on current risk assessments and in line with CARE and the Country Office’s overall posture.
• Ensure that effective communications equipment and protocols are in place and that all staff members who utilize this equipment are adequately trained.
• Ensure that established movement tracking protocols are adhered to by both the SSU and CARE Turkey staff.
• Develop and ensure the implementation of physical access control protocols for all CARE Turkey facilities.
• Ensure that the CARE Turkey Senior Management Team (SMT) and Country Director are aware of non-compliance with agreed standards and that obstacles toward maintaining standards are reported and acted upon by Country Office management.
• Establish routine audit and compliance checks by the SSU to ensure that protocols are effectively being implemented.

Job Responsibility #4

Incident and Crisis Management

• Serve as the Risk Management lead on CARE Turkey’s Crisis Management Team if and when it is required to be formed.

• Ensure that all Field Level and Country Level Crisis management plans are kept up to date and reviewed, and if required amended.

• Ensure that the necessary external relationships are maintained in order to facilitate a quick response and assistance to CARE Turkey during any critical incident or crisis.

Job Responsibility #5

Capacity Building

• Build capacity of the SSU through training, coaching and mentoring as defined in annual Performance Plans (APAAs) as well as informal coaching and mentoring sessions. Ensure that members of the SSU plan for and attend relevant technical trainings during the Fiscal Year (FY) and that these training plans are supported by the available budget.
• Performance-manage any areas of weakness within the SSU team.
• Identify talent areas of SSU team members and develop those capabilities as required by the Country Office objectives.
• Build the operations monitoring abilities of the SSU staff to enable the expansion of activities to operations room functions if/when the program requires it.

Job Responsibility #6

Advice and Report

• Prepare a monthly situational report to the Regional Office utilizing the pre-set format.
• Brief the Senior Management Team on contextual developments specific to CARE Turkey’s area of operations on a weekly basis.
• Provide daily and formal or informal feedback to the Country Director on progress in respect to SSU actions and initiatives.
• Ensure weekly incident and context reports are compiled by the SSU and submitted to the identified members of the CARE Turkey team – where required ensure this report is completed local languages to ensure relevance and usability in field locations.

Job Responsibility #7

• Promote cross-regional collaboration, sharing of ideas and initiatives and operational best practice with Country Offices in MENA or the broader CARE network
• Any tasking as defined by the regional office or the Country Director CARE Turkey.

Problem Solving

Level 3 - incidents are known to happen on irregular bases and the ORA will have to determine ongoing threat levels to staff and operations and advise on how best to respond.

Qualifications (Know-How)

Education/Training

Required

• Bachelor’s Degree in a field related to humanitarian work or risk management or equivalent field / operational experience.

Desired

• Recognized certificate in Risk management
• Recognized certificate in adult training

Experience

Required

• 5 years’ experience in assisting international organizations in developing countries to manage staff and program safety.
• 5 years’ experience in working in an international organization
• 5 years’ experience in working in complex and hazardous environments

Technical Skills

Required

• Strong assessment, evaluation and planning skills.
• Demonstrable expertise of Humanitarian risk management.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Strong demonstrated inter-personal skills in a multi-cultural environment.
• Ability to make a good judgment on staff safety and provide appropriate advice.
• Demonstrated ability to manage under stressful conditions.
• Strong ability to analyze and understand complex situations and translate these into specific policy advice

Desired

• Strong understanding of programming in humanitarian and development projects
• Good knowledge of Turkey and the region, especially in its social and political context.

Child Protection Policy

Child abuse in all forms is unacceptable to CARE Turkey, which recognizes its responsibility to protect children from harm in all areas of its work. CARE Turkey is committed to ensuring a child-safe environment and is applying a zero-tolerance approach towards any kind of child abuse and exploitation.

Discrimination, Abuse and Harassment Policy

CARE Turkey expressly prohibits and will not tolerate any form of discrimination, abuse, harassment (sexual or otherwise), based upon race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, age, sexual orientation, marital status, citizenship status, disability, or military status. CARE employees and related personnel must under no circumstances take part in any form of discrimination, harassment, or abuse (physical, sexual or verbal), intimidation or exploitation, or in any other way infringe the rights of others inside or outside CARE.

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

Employment is subject to the possession of valid identification documents (passport, residency card, temporary protection card, etc.) and successfully obtaining permission to work by the Government of Turkey (work permit). CARE will submit the work permit application on behalf of the selected candidate after the job offer accepted. Candidate can start to work for CARE only after the work permit is received. Failure to provide the required documents or rejection of a work permit application by the Government of Turkey will result in your employment offer being rescinded.

HOW TO APPLY

Interested candidates, please send a Curriculum Vitae in English and a Cover letter (in a separate file of no more than one A4 page) describing how your skills and experience match the requirements of this post, following to:

https://form.jotform.com/200402929642956

Applications in languages other than English will not be reviewed.

“Applications are strongly encouraged from female candidates“

Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

**** CARE International is an Equal Opportunity Employer **