Background

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

The UN Women Policy, Procedure and Guidance (PPG) framework is a governance and accountability framework, that was developed to strengthen governance and internal controls by ensuring that internal facing policies, procedures and guidance documents are risk-driven and designed to meet the organizational needs.  Within the PPG framework, the PPG Policy framework serves to establish responsibilities, procedures and instructions for the management, development, approval, promulgation, review and update of PPGs and the authorization of exceptions and resolution of inconsistencies relating to such documents, as well as the hierarchy of PPGs.

As a result, two experienced Internal Policy Management Consultants are required to contribute to efforts to support components of Policy, Procedure and Guidance Framework, with a specific focus on materially revised and new policies, procedures and related documents. This is to ensure that these are not only aligned to meet the entity’s needs but are also compliant with the process related to internal policy cycle management.

The consultant will be reporting to the Enterprise Risk Manager, and will be supported by Governance, Risk and Compliance Specialist, who will be the point of contact on the contract and payment issues.

Duties and Responsibilities

The Policy Management Consultant shall assist in the management, oversight and implementation of the PPG Policy Framework and shall provide advice for PPG needs analysis and development, shall undertake a review of specific documents, supporting the coordination with content owners to ensure PPGs are adequate, up-to-date, and fully responsive to UN Women’s operating context.

• Conduct a substantive review (otherwise known as a ‘quality assurance’) on select policies and procedures and guidance (PPGs) which entails ensuring that the documents comply with the PPG Policy framework. As part of the quality assurance review of PPGs, undertake steps to verify whether (a) PPGs take into consideration relevant risks and organizational needs; (b) roles and responsibilities are clearly articulated; (c) PPG documents are concise and not ambiguous; and (d) documents have been developed in a consultative manner.
• For complex policies and procedures, perform the first level quality assurance process and flag key areas of concern for the Enterprise Risk Manager and the Governance, Risk and Compliance Specialist.
• Work with identified content owners to structure, describe and develop/revise PPGs in a concise and clear manner and in so doing, provide technical and advisory support to content owners for updating, developing, and implementing policies, procedures, processes, and other changes necessary to ensure that these are written, reviewed, and consulted on in accordance with the PPG Policy and Procedural framework.
• Assist content owners to create documents that (a) comply with policy writing standards on document hierarchy, language, writing style, structure and format (including the use of prescribed templates); (b) use agreed upon definitions are used consistently in PPGs, to the greatest extent possible; and (c) present information for optimal reader comprehension.
• Support the SPRED Division in working with business process owners to (a) ensure that policies and procedures that have interdependencies are cross-referenced in a harmonized manner; and (b) provide advice on potential change management requirements of newly created or revised PPGs.
• Support the Internal Policy Management Team with mapping business processes (in collaboration with content owners), to be used for the visual classification of PPGs on the PPG intranet portal.

Consultant’s Workplace and Official Travel

This is a home-based consultancy.

Competencies

Required Skills and Experience

Education and Certification:

• Master’s degree or equivalent in law, public administration, business administration accounting or a related field is required.
• A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience:

• At least 8 years of relevant experience in any of the following areas: policy/procedure development or governance, business development, auditing or compliance, covering more than one functional workstreams.
• Experience of working with cross-functional teams to achieve common organizational objectives.

Languages:

Fluency in English is required