Administrative Assistant

The immunization programme is tasked with providing expertise and general support for high-quality immunization services to all communities of the Member States of the sub-region, in order to prevent morbidity, mortality and disability from diseases which are preventable through the optimum use of currently available vaccines and vaccines that become available periodically.

As Administrative Assistant in the VPD programme, mainly under the VPD team lead, the incumbent will ensure the smooth flow of work as related to administrative and finance activities, coordinating actions with other support staff in the team and in consultation and collaboration with the VPD team lead in accordance with WHO rules, regulations, and policies.

DESCRIPTION OF DUTIES

General 

• Oversee and monitor the information flow of the office, screening, logging, sorting, identifying areas requiring action by the supervisor and routing correspondence.
• Ensure effective and timely follow up on requests for information, briefings and other actions, liaising with units/teams, as appropriate.
• Disseminate information on administrative procedures to staff in the team/department and assist staff in adhering to WHO administrative procedures.
• Train staff in the Cluster on administrative services including new changes in the process for Finance, HR, Procurement, and other related areas.
• Monitor requests for goods and services, including receipt, payment and inventory requirements.
• Coordinate and monitor office space requirements in liaison with relevant units as required.
• Introduce new and efficient processes and tools to expedite administrative actions.

 Correspondence 

• Prepare and consolidate reports and documentation soliciting inputs from various staff in the team.
• Draft general or administrative correspondence on own initiative or on the basis of instructions; finalize correspondence/reports for signature/clearance.
• Verify that outgoing correspondence is presented in accordance with WHO and department styles and checking language, grammar and accuracy prior to submitting for signature and clearance.
• Analyse incoming correspondence and requests in the light of background material, instructions, policies and precedents, researching, obtaining and attaching background information in anticipation of the responsible officer’s needs, or redirecting them as appropriate; identify and highlight incoming documents and attach background information and identify areas requiring action by professional staff, drawing their attention to specific items.
• Ensure that technical reports and documents are in line with WHO standards, rules, practices and procedures, editing and correcting them as necessary prior to their submission for signature or clearance of relevant authority.
• Using appropriate tracking tools, follow-up on and ensure that target dates and deadlines are met, and that correspondence and queries are responded to in a timely manner.

Information Management 

• In close collaboration with other support staff, create and/or maintain filing systems; continual review of filing system to ensure information is up to date and effectively and efficiently used.
• Obtain documents and information from in-house and external sources as required; perform information searches (library, internet) as requested.
• Coordinate compilation of technical documents requested of and provided by staff to ensure they are logically compiled, formatted and assembled to facilitate the work of the Cluster.
• Maintain updated contacts’ information of donors and partners

 Meeting administration 

• Arrange, coordinate and lead administrative preparation for meetings, seminars, workshops, including preparing event plans in GSM/Oracle, letters of invitation, cost estimates and travel requests; assisting with preparation of documents; dispatching of materials and liaising with participants and others involved.
• Prepare presentations using PowerPoint and other software packages on own initiative or based on instructions.
• Schedule team/departmental meetings, according to schedules and need; taking minutes and following up on action points to ensure timely response to the requests of the RHRM and preparation of minutes.
• Obtain briefing and background materials for meetings, seminars, workshops, etc. to be attended by the team’s professional staff, checking their availability and ensuring they have the appropriate briefing files and documents.

 Travel and Procurement

• Raising registrations and TRs in the GSM system
• Follow up on the receipts of the goods/services and enter the receipts in the system
• Monitor encumbrances
• Using GSM/Oracle, prepare travel requests for official WHO travel. Make flight and hotel reservations, prepare travel files and deal with other related matters as requested or on own initiative.

 Filing

• Ensure that files are maintained, stored and easily retrievable for the team.

 Other duties

• Perform other related duties as required or instructed, including providing support to other areas of work

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

Education:   

• Essential: Completion of secondary education or equivalent technical training or commercial education
• Desirable:  Training in secretarial tasks and/or in an administrative, finance & procurement field is desirable.

EXPERIENCE 

• Essential: At least 5 years of relevant experience and preferably on administrative related areas of work.
• Desirable: Experience in other areas such as Program Management, Travel and Procurement would be an asset.  Experience in WHO or another UN agency in an administrative cluster with a sound knowledge of its rules, regulation, procedures, and practices as related to the work. Experience in Oracle-based or other ERP systems an asset

Use of language skills

• Essential: Expert knowledge of French and intermediate knowledge of English.

Source: https://careers.who.int/careersection/ex/jobdetail.ftl?job=2404277&tz=GMT%2B05%3A30&tzname=Asia%2FCalcutta