Senior Human Resources Coordinator

Job Description

Background/IRC Summary: The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC offers lifesaving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. At work today in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities, we restore safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure. The IRC leads the way from harm to home.

The IRC worked in El Salvador between 1984 and 1992 during the civil war and left with the signing of the peace accords. In response to the ongoing violence and dangers in El Salvador, the IRC returned in 2017 to help meet the acute needs of vulnerable communities such as women, girls, adolescents, the LGBTI population, people displaced by violence, migrants, and returnees. IRC uses evidence-based approaches to deliver humanitarian programming, working in close partnership with civil society organizations, as well as the governments in northern Central America. IRC’s NCA program works throughout El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Purpose: The Senior Coordinator for Human Resources (SCHR) will contribute to IRC’s strategic action plan by influencing and shaping IRC NCA’s organization culture and by being the main business partner to support Senior Leaders, impacts all the program teams as well. In partnership with the Senior Management Team (SMT), the SCHR will build an organization that is a supportive, inspiring place to work. The SCHR will develop and lead a people-focused HR agenda that supports IRC’s goals and objectives and promotes IRC’s vision and values. The SCHR will develop recruitment and onboarding strategies to ensure our workforce is representative of the communities with whom we work; the SCHR will create opportunities for IRC staff to engage in IRC’s vision and mission and will foster collaboration and communication across the organization.

Job Summary: The SCRH is an integral member of the NCA senior country management team and reports directly to the Country Director and in Management-in-Partnership to the Regional HR Director. The SCRH will lead the development and implementation of IRC NCA’s human resources strategy. A core responsibility will be building and maintaining an inclusive, supportive, and collaborative work culture in and across all three country operations.

With a strategic lens, the SCRH oversees recruitment, supports the performance management system, supervises the HR team in NCA and promotes targeted learning and development initiatives as well as other HR projects and functions, and acts as an HR partner for the NCA senior management team. The SCRH will actively participate in development and roll out of global and regional HR initiatives, ensuring that local HR policies and procedures are up to date and in compliance with the country legislations.

Major Responsibilities:

- Assess the NCA HR strategy and operating environment; design and develop a HR strategy that will create an inclusive, supportive, and collaborative work culture in and across El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. - Supervise and guide the HR team to attract, develop and retain the right talent with the right skills to achieve high-quality programmatic outcomes in line with Strategic Action Plans - Determine workforce needs, identify human resources and competency gaps, and devise a development and workforce plan to facilitate nationalization of roles and staff retention - Actively participate in the proposal design and grants opening and review meetings, advise on organizational structure, position scoping, demographic/staffing analysis and other inputs critical to ensuring a strong HR foundation to support program quality. - Lead a collaborative approach to employee engagement, gender equality and staff duty of care strategy and supporting initiatives, drawing on country, regional and HQ inputs, and resources. - Continually assess and refine recruitment tactics; develop candidate rosters, actively network, and employ innovative, creative recruiting methods to attract and hire the best talent. - Review and approve job position requests, job descriptions, and make recommendations, ensuring accuracy and consistency within NCA and the Latam region. - Deliver international HR management, including policy, process, and employee relations management, with support from the Regional HR Director as needed. - Lead the performance management process with guidance from regional and HQ, create plan to manage annual and mid-year Performance Check-Ins, conduct trainings on goal setting, utilize budgets to organize development activities and work one-on-one with managers and employees to create country wide development plans, support a culture of continuous feedback through HR initiatives and actions. - Participate in budget preparation and provide strategic compensation analysis to drive nationalization and ability to attract high-quality talent, define and review salary structure, coordinate annual compensation review process and compensation adjustments, consult with HQ compensation team to align with best practices. - Manage national benefit plans, communicate updates, and conduct information campaigns for national and international staff. Consult with HQ benefits team to align with IRC best practices. - Devise staff duty of care action plans that elevate morale and support the well-being of staff; create emergency staff care interventions. Consult with Regional HR Director and Global Duty of Care Director to align with IRC best practices. - Oversee HR administration and ensure 100% compliance with current labor laws; consult and partner with local counsel as needed. - Advice Senior Leadership about potential risks associated with HR matters for the 3 countries and makes sure that it is understood and mitigated. - Lead employee relations with professional grace with the aim of empowering employees and supervisors to with the tools and resources necessary to resolve conflicts with mutual respect, act as impartial mediator when necessary and escalate code of conduct issues, lead/co-lead employee relations investigations and ensure issues are brought to resolution with appropriate follow-up carried out. Partner with and seek counsel from Ethics and Compliance Unit (ECU) as needed. - Advise supervisors in determining appropriate, consistent, and judicious disciplinary measures in line with local labor law and global policy. - Manage any lay-offs or reorganizations in partnership with SMT, supervisors and regional HR to with an emphasis on compliance, due diligence, communications, and staff care. - Lead exit management to ensure seamless and positive transition for all departing employees. - Serve as a model of supervisory excellence; supervise and mentor direct-report HR staff, including communicating clear expectations, setting/refining performance objectives, providing regular and timely performance feedback, and leading documented semi-annual performance reviews. - Provide constructive feedback and counsel on career paths and professional development for HR team and IRC staff; foster a culture of continuous learning opportunities. - Support senior staff to continue to pursue nationalization of senior and management positions. - Promote and monitor staff care and well-being, support healthy work-life balance practices. - Communicate and encourage active practice of the principles of the “IRC Way – Global Standards for Professional Conduct” throughout the country program. - Maintain healthy and empowering office environment that encourage open, honest and productive communication among IRC staff by delivering employee engagement and communication action plans. - Maintain and leverage open communications and partnership on projects and shared goals with other HR Leads at the country level, regional HR and HR HQ levels. - This job description is not comprehensive and additional responsibilities in the remit of the role may be added according to the function.

Key Working Relationships: Senior Management Team, Regional HR Team

Position Reports to: Country Director and in MAP to the Regional HR Director Latam

Position directly supervises: HR Coordinator, HR officers.

Qualifications

Education:

- Bachelor´s degree in Human Resources, Business Administration or Psychology. - Master’s degree in human resources or MBA with specialization in human resources or equivalent in years of experience.

Work Experience:

- At least 08 years of work experience in leading key HR functions, overseeing Recruitment, Compensation & Benefits, Talent Management, Organizational Design and HR reporting. Preference for experience in both private sector and in INGOs

Demonstrated Skills and Competencies:

- Excellent management, interpersonal and negotiation skills and a demonstrated ability to promote harmonious/cohesive teamwork, in a cross-cultural context - Demonstrable ability to plan long-term, organize priorities and work under administrative and programmatic pressures with detail orientation and professional grace - Proven sense of professional discretion, integrity, and ability to manage complex HR situations diplomatically and to effective resolution - Top-tier written and verbal communication skills - Ability to demonstrate a supportive and consultative approach with direct reports and staff at senior and junior levels - Strong skills in recruitment and compensation & benefits management. - Very strong proficiency in MS Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint is required - Previous experience of HRIS, payroll and reports - Ability to plan, multi-task and manage time effectively

Language Skills: Have fluent spoken and written Spanish, Intermediate to advanced English is preferrable

Others:

Willingness to travel within Central America to field sites under demanding conditions.

The IRC Core Values and Commitments.

The IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in IRC Way - Standards for Professional Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Equality and Accountability. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Anti Workplace Harassment, Fiscal Integrity Anti-Retaliation and Combating Trafficking in Persons.

IRC is committed to ensuring that IRC staff is suitable to work with children and have the knowledge s/he needs to uphold and abide by the IRC’s Child Safeguarding Policy.

Level of interaction with children: Limited direct contact with children

IRC ensures that its staff must actively practice the roles and responsibilities related to client responsiveness, accountability to people in affected communities and must have competencies to solicits and listens to feedback and other’s perspectives, responds to feedback with maturity and sensitivity and takes appropriate decisions and makes changes to behavior or actions in response to feedback.

IRC recognizes that gender equality is fundamental to the achievement of our organizational mission. As such, IRC is committed to the promotion of gender equality in all aspects of our operations and programs. Our organizational policies, procedures and actions demonstrate this commitment.

Women, LGBTI+ candidates and persons with disability are strongly encouraged to apply.