Consultancy (part-time, home-based): Mapping and analysing existing practice and future opportunities in business measuring and monitoring social impact, Child Rights and Business (CRB), Div

Consultant Communications & PR

Overview

Produce an analytical overview on measuring business social impact for UNICEF.

You have:

• Master’s degree required in international relations, business administration, corporate social responsibility/sustainability, human rights, or economics.
• A minimum of eight years of experience in business, sustainability, and human rights, including international exposure.
• Experience and knowledge of implementing business due diligence mechanisms.
• Previous research and publications in the field of sustainable business.
• Experience working on child rights is highly desirable, with knowledge of UNICEF programmes a significant plus.
• Experience working with multi-lateral and UN agencies is desirable.
• Fluency in English is required, with a record of excellent writing and analytical skills.
• Demonstrated understanding of measuring social impact by business through an interview.

Contract

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UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, hope

The Children’s Rights and Business (CRB) Unit within the Private Fundraising and Partnerships (PFP) Division is responsible for developing guidance: a) for companies, governments, and civil society on addressing business impact on children’s rights and, b) for UNICEF on how to engage business to address its impact on children. UNICEF sees the world of business (i.e. the ecosystem of large and small businesses, regulators, industry associations, investors, etc.) as having a key role in addressing child deprivations and achieving the SDGs. UNICEF works with all business stakeholders – companies, government and civil society – to create an enabling environment where business respects and supports children’s rights.

Building on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, in 2012 UNICEF and partners launched the Children’s Rights and Business Principles (CRBP), outlining business responsibilities to respect and support children’s rights. Since the release of the CRBP, UNICEF and partners have developed a number of assessments, tools and guidance products for business and regulators to help them understand and take action on business impact on children, looking at impact through the lens of the workplace, marketplace and community, as well as specific industries and business models. These outline the basis of what constitutes child rights due diligence for a business - how to assess impact, formulating policies, implementation measures, disclosure and remediation.

UNICEF is seeking an expert consultant to produce an analytical overview of the current state and emerging trends in measuring and monitoring social impact of business operations. This will both inform UNICEF’s own process in monitoring and assessing results of its engagement with business around impact for children, as well as to initiate a discussion in the public space around how business can improve its results reporting around impact on children.

CONTEXT

The public and the private sectors are intertwined, with the boundaries between resource procurement or infrastructure development and support and the running of public services by the private sector constantly shifting. The private sector identifies significant opportunities for profit in delivering or contributing to public services and, above and beyond this, to the wider notion of societal well-being and sustainability. Linked to this, corporate social responsibility and ESG is evolving beyond “do no harm” approaches towards notions of “purposeful” business which contributes to societal improvement through core business practice. Since the development of the SDGs, governments and business have both spoken loudly about how the private sector is essential for the SDGs to be achieved.

The economic and social fall out of the COVID 19 pandemic has underscored the fault-lines, structural deprivation and gross inequalities that need to be addressed for the SDGs to be achieved and the rights of all children to be realized. It is a huge setback for the global economy, for the world of business, for children and for SDG progress. Many businesses face existential threat and have been thrown lifelines by governments using tax-payers money, starkly illustrating the interdependence of public and private from another angle. The rhetoric of “building back better” includes the potentially expanded role of business in delivering social well-being as an important dimension, and, for the moment at least, appears to be reinforcing and building on business interest in being purposeful.

The notion of purposeful business is a comforting self-representation in a world where capitalist extremes and business motivations are increasingly called out. The power of business makes ensuring it is accountable an essential element for the public good, but this is not always given prominence, especially in the rhetoric of “win-win”. Governments have legislated for worker and environmental protections for years, although scope and robustness are constantly contested, and the ideological stripe of both political and economic theory periodically rolls back protection and safe-guarding achievements (and influences the scope of what is accepted as within the responsibility of business). Currently, there appears to be general recognition of the need for smart mixes of statutory and voluntary regulation (all the evidence points towards regulation being essential for collective business good practice at scale), although opinions on the balance of the mix vary considerably.

Business recognition of its social and environmental impact and its claim to a wider social role comes with an even deeper need for recognition of responsibility and accountability. Governments and regional bodies, even in the midst of the pandemic, are seeking to introduce new forms of accountability, notably around business behavior and supply chain due diligence. Any form of accountability, including due diligence, requires measurement, enforcement and access to remedy. For the business claim to be contributing to social well-being to be taken seriously—for it to be genuinely more than public relations rhetoric—there is need for business (and independent monitors of business practice), to be able to demonstrate where and how it is having social impact, both positive and adverse. Without this it is very difficult for governments and other actors to properly assess the role of business in sustainable development planning and target setting.

Current approaches to monitoring socially responsible business practice are primarily based on audit focusing on processes and compliance, rarely reaching towards implementation of policies or practices, and even less towards actual social impact (in UNICEF terms, the focus is on inputs, activities and outputs—not on outcomes and impact). An ESG industry has developed around monitoring compliance, but there is risk that compliance-limited approaches are more orientated towards reducing risk to companies than to reducing risk to children and families—or to delivering outcomes and positive impact.

For UNICEF, which is integrating business more systematically into the programme side of its work, social impact includes the situation of children and the wider environment that supports good results for children. Understanding how business measures impact is essential for UNICEF to be able to engage successfully with business. It is similarly necessary for UNICEF to have clarity on how it should measure the contribution of the world of business to achieving results for children within its own programme reporting methods and systems. A minimum reason for this is to be able to assess whether engaging business is effective and involves a good return on investment. A wider reason is that good programme design needs to integrate effective strategies and the necessary actors. Ideally UNICEF and business results narratives should be able to speak to each other and be based on compatible metrics.

How can you make a difference?

UNICEF is seeking an expert consultant with significant expertise in responsible business to produce an analytical overview of the current state and emerging trends in measuring and monitoring social impact of business operations.

The expectation is that the analytical overview will provide insights on the following questions:

1. What are the different definitions used by the business world of social impact? Do these focus on positive impact of business operations or do they also include reduction of negative impacts?
2. What are the different approaches to measuring social impact results in current frameworks identified as prominent due to high uptake or innovative approaches? At what level do these frameworks and approaches measure results (intent, policy, actions, impact on stakeholders)? Are results quantifiable, how are they quantified, and do they allow for comparison or benchmarking?
3. What are emerging and future trends in this space? Are there emerging approaches that could allow for better accountability, comparability or clear performance targets?
4. How does business assess the effectiveness of its actions and interventions to address negative impacts of business operations? Are there viable alternatives to compliance approaches in addressing core labor rights, gender and other social challenges?

UNICEF is a leading authority globally on monitoring children’s rights and development, and is supporting primarily national and local governments across the globe on monitoring and measuring results for children. There may be value in looking to repackaging this knowledge and expertise into guidance for business, and the consultancy is the first step to informing this decision. UNICEF uses a results based management (RBM) approach, which offers a good framework to plan for measurable results for children, and insights of whether and how this approach would work for business is desirable.

The contract is structured around 2 deliverables, to be completed by 30 November 2020 (see below).

MAIN TASKS & DELIVERABLES

Under the guidance of the supervisor of this contract, the consultant will be responsible for delivering the analytical overview of the current state and emerging trends in measuring and monitoring social impact of business operations (final title to be decided as part of the task) packaged in the form of an internal insights paper for UNICEF and an externally facing discussion paper.

The contract assumes that only desk research will be necessary to complete the tasks of the consultancy.

Specifically, the two deliverables in the contract are:

Deliverable 1 : A report (format to be agreed, for internal UNICEF use) providing basic information and recommendations for UNICEF to understand whether and how measurement systems, frameworks, methods and approaches used by business can inform UNICEF’s own results measurement and monitoring systems as pertains to its work with business on social impact.

Deliverable 2: A short (20-30 pages) discussion/white paper (to be issued on a publication) to initiate discussions around:

1. 1. Frameworks supporting the measurement of business child-relevant social impact.
   2. Strengths and weaknesses of existing approaches
   3. Alternative models currently under discussion/development (where known)
   4. The potential relevance of adapting UNICEF’s RBM approach
   5. Implications of measurement for approaches to forthcoming legislation for human rights due diligence
   6. Tentative recommendations on how to get beyond compliance audit to measuring child-relevant social impact.

Tasks and Timeframe

The consultancy is expected to be fully completed by 30 November 2020.

Activities/tasks

Deliverables

Timeline (subject to agreement with consultant)

Estimated # days

1. Inception meeting with supervisor to agree on overall outline, framing and methodology of tasks

Remote meeting

At start of contract

0.5 days

2. Development and submission of a brief inception report, which will contain detailed methodologies for the analytical overview and the framing of the two main deliverables, and a proposed timeline for each phase and deliverable.

Inception report

1 October

3 days

3. First draft of the discussion/white paper (deliverable 2) for review by UNICEF

First draft of deliverable 2

20 October

12 days

4. First draft of the UNICEF internal report (deliverable 1) for review by UNICEF

First draft of deliverable 1

4 November

7 days

5. Integration of comments from UNICEF and finalization of deliverable 2

Final draft of deliverable 2

13 November

2 days

6. Integration of comments from UNICEF and finalization of deliverable 1

Final draft of deliverable 1

20 November

2 days

7. Exit meeting

Remote meeting

By 30 November

0.5 days

TOTAL DAYS

27

Based on agreement with the consultant in the inception phase, the consultant may be asked to submit several drafts of expected documents, for UNICEF review and inputs. The received feedback will be reflected in the documents, before submitting the next draft.

Contract management: UNICEF Children’s Rights and Business team in its Division of Private Fundraising and Partnerships will be responsible for all aspects of management of this project, administrative and technical. A focal point in the team will be available to the consultant to consult on framing, methodology and necessary insights from UNICEF’s monitoring and results reporting process as needed (to be agreed in inception meeting).

ESTIMATED DURATION OF THE CONTRACT AND PROPOSAL

The consultant is expected to deliver the deliverables as per the plan above (subject to discussion), the total contracts consists of an estimated 27 working days.

REPORTING TO

Corporate Alliances Manager, the Children’s Rights and Business (CRB) Unit, PFP

WORKPLACE

Consultant is expected to work remotely with no expectation for travel.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• Master’s degree required in a field of international relations, business administration, corporate social responsibility/sustainability, human rights, or economics.
• A minimum of eight years of experience working within the business, sustainability and human rights space, either academically or professionally, with international experience and perspective (study towards a PhD would be included in this).
• Experience and knowledge of the implementation of business due diligence mechanisms.
• Previous research and publications in the field of sustainable business.
• Experience working on child rights highly desirable, with knowledge of UNICEF programmes a significant plus.
• Experience working with multi-lateral and UN agencies is desirable. Fluency in English is required. Applicants must have a proven record of excellent writing and analytical skills in English.
• Demonstrated understanding of measuring social impact by business (assessed through interview with shortlisted candidates).

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA) and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.

View our competency framework at http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/files/UNICEF_Competencies.pdf

Remarks: Please indicate your ability, availability and gross daily/monthly rate (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference above (including travel and daily subsistence allowance, if applicable). Applications submitted without a daily/monthly rate will not be considered. Also, please mention the earliest date you can start.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein. Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

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Potential interview questions

Added 5 years ago - Updated 1 year ago - Source: unicef.org