Head of Progamme Quality and Opera tion
December 2023
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About Christian Aid For 77 years, Christian AID has provided long-term development support and humanitarian relief worldwide, highlighting suffering, tackling injustice and championing people’s rights. Our vision is a world where everyone has fullness of life; a life lived with dignity, free from poverty and need; where global resources are equitably shared and sustainably used; and where the voice and agency of the poor and marginalised are fully realised. We live in a world where the scandal of poverty, inequality and injustice persists. We act as a global movement of people to respond in practical ways to alleviate suffering; to expose and eradicate misuses of power; to provide humanitarian support in crises and emergencies; and to work for sustainable and long-lasting change.
Christian Aid Strategic framework
Our global strategy, Standing Together, lays out an analytical framework for our approach to tackle extreme poverty: • Poverty: Reach people living in extreme poverty, challenge structural poverty, and respond to need. • Power: Understand, challenge, shift and build new forms of power across all connected levels. • Prophetic voice: Enact, together with people living in poverty, a shared vision of a just and healed world.
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About Christian Aid Our Values Equality Everyone is equal in the sight of God. Yet we live in a world where poverty and inequality still persist. We tackle the power imbalances that cause poverty by working together with those who have been left behind. We seek to create a world in which everyone has an equal voice, equal power, and an equal opportunity to make the most of their lives. Dignity People living in poverty should be able to make their own decisions about the future. We fight for their dignity and support them to change their own lives. Justice Poverty is an outrage against humanity. It robs people of their dignity and lets injustice thrive. We are passionate about justice, and we stand together with the most vulnerable and excluded to build a fairer world. Love Love is the core of who we are. God’s love transforms us; it gives us the strength to choose to love people living in poverty who we’ve never met, and the empathy to create change for good.
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The Role
Role: Head of Programme Quality and Operations Location: Flexible Salary: Competitive based on Christian Aid salary scale
Job Summary
Supports the Director in providing strategic leadership, operational oversight, and management to ensure the successful implementation of international programmes and related corporate commitments. This role involves coordinating business critical projects in challenging circumstances, ensuring that they align with the overall organizational strategies, goals and priorities. This is a senior leadership role in the international department and more widely within CA. It provides an enabling function for the whole advocacy, humanitarian and development programme and provides evidence to influence future programming and the wider sector.
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Responsibilities
• Support the programme quality and programme operations and work cross departmentally to ensure strong cooperation, alignment and coherence of business operations and processes enabling operational excellence across all Christian Aid programmes. • Develop, disseminate, maintain, and review technical and functional quality standards, policies, processes and minimum requirements for humanitarian, development and advocacy programme relationships, designs and delivery. • Create, adopt and continuously improve business processes, policies, and systems that enable programmes to deliver and evidence positive change, results and impact. • Provide training, guidance and virtual or in-country short-term staffing solutions (depending on context) to enable programme teams to operationalize quality standards. • Oversee agile and effective surge process for crisis response in strong collaboration with internal stakeholders and manage resources for surge. • Provide timely and accurate reporting on operational performance, challenges, and successes to the International Department senior leadership and other relevant stakeholders. • Ensure user friendly digital systems that enable better management and support to programmes and their enabling functions. • Facilitate programme and related management information system required for decision making and organisational and programme performance management. • Ensure project/programme level learning is informing decision making.
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• Provide data and insights to enable evidence-based decision making. • Support change management processes within the International Department to ensure cohesion with corporate strategic direction and to maximize impact for people living in poverty. • Develop and broker key relationships, and represent the International Department in external spaces and in internal governance bodies and cross functional working groups as requested by the International Director • Lead special projects and champion key corporate initiatives to ensure they are embedded across the department. • Support the Director of international programme in planning, budgeting, tracking and resource allocation processes for the international department as well as overseeing the budgets for PQOD and Humanitarian Division. • Ensure that planning and reporting process within the international programme and align with corporate planning and reporting processes. • Facilitate the identification, analysis, and management of potential risks associated with programme operations. • Supportscompliance with local laws and regulations in the countries where programmes are implemented. • Line-manage the Programme Quality Manager, Programme Operations Manager, Global Monitoring Evaluation and Learning Manager and Digital Programme Systems Manager.
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Role requirements Relationships
External: Liaises with functional counterparts in peer agencies for the purposes of mutual learning, collaboration and continuous improvement. Internal: Member of the Senior Leadership Team of the International Department and of the corporate Extended Leadership Team. Holds key relationships with cross functional teams across departments.
Expected international travel per annum: Up to 40 days. On call/unsocial hours: Yes, in event of Christian Aid response to humanitarian emergency. Surge capacity for emergency responses: No
Developing self and others Number of Direct reports: 4
Decision making
Overall people management responsibility: approx. 25
Analytical skills
The extent to which the job holder is responsible for their own work, for influencing and/or directing the work of others, acting in an advisory/specialist capacity.
Budgetary/savings responsibility £1 million
Responsible for promoting operational excellence in programme and for evidencing impact and results. Requires a combination of conceptual thinking; analysis of varied and sometimes uneven or ambiguous data (financial and other) and evidence; and ability to understand and re-think systems and processes.
Role agility
Role related checks Police Check: Basic
Counter terrorism screening: Required
Expected national travel per annum: Occasional travel.
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Candidate profile Essential
• Experience of leading teams and communities of practice in situations of operational and functional complexity, excellent relationship, and people management skills. • Experience and knowledge of one or more fields of international development, humanitarian, and advocacy with on the ground programme experience gained in Africa, Asia, the Middle East or Latin America and the Caribbean. • Strong understanding of how to effect organisational change and inspire high performance. • A track record of developing and improving business processes with accountability for outcomes, performance, and compliance to stakeholders. • Demonstrable commitment to providing and demanding appropriate levels of service delivery. • Experience of policy development, planning and reporting processes in complex operations. • High level of functional numeracy skills and understanding of organisational and project finance. • Ability to present complex information in ways that are accessible and inspiring to diverse audiences. • Academic, professional, or technical qualification.
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Desirable
• A higher degree in a relevant area • Ability to work in a second language that is used in the regions where CA’s programme operates. • Intermediate Digital/IT competencies required. • Intermediate Word, Excel, PowerPoint • Basic Web content design & development • Internet based collaboration tools and video calling • Basic social media • Intermediate Data Visualisation
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How to Apply All correspondence, at this stage, should be via Oxford HR. To apply for this post, click on the “Apply” button on the job advert page, complete our online application form, and submit your CV and cover letter as two different documents, which should be prepared before applying as they will be considered in the application process. The cover letter should be no more than two pages long and explain why you are interested in this post and how your skills and experience make you a good fit. The document should be saved in PDF in the following format: Your First Name-Your Last NameDocument Name-Date (mmyy), e.g., Pat-Jones-CV122023-Christian Aid or Pat-Jones-CoverLetter122023-Christian Aid. Please note that all our clients recruiting in the UK are legally obliged to confirm that the appointee is eligible to work in the UK. As of 1 January 2021, the government’s new regulations will apply. For further information visit the Home Office website.
Timeline
Closing Date: First Stage Interviews: Final interviews:
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Selection process
All candidates will receive an update regarding their application after the closing date. We advise candidates to add the role email to their safe sender’s list and regularly check their spam folder.
Equality Statement
Equality and diversity are at the core of Christian Aid values. Staff are expected to work collectively and individually to promote a constructive and sensitive approach to others from a variety of backgrounds, where the work of others is valued and respected.
Queries
If you have any queries on any aspect of the appointment process, need additional information, or would like to have an informal discussion, please email at christianaid-head@oxfordhr.com in the first instance.
13 February 2024 TBC TBC
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About Oxford HR Oxford HR operates globally - mainly within the international development and charity sectors. We carry out retained executive search mandates at the board and senior management levels. We also offer human resource and organisational development consultancy. Oxford HR has many years of experience in search and an extensive network of international development, social sector, corporate, public sector, and academic contacts from across the world. We carry out comprehensive and often global searches designed to meet the specific needs of our clients.
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