Staff Counsellor, NOC, Fixed Term, Port-au-Prince, Haiti

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.

Strategic office context:

Medium sized office with a full component of operations located in the capital city to have close proximity to government partners.

Due to the nature and location of their work, UNICEF Haiti Country Office staff are frequently exposed to high levels of day to day, cumulative stress, including those stressors related to their workload as well as the demands related to living and working in multicultural, often unstable, and insecure environments. These have a debilitating impact on staff members’ mental health and well-being, adversely impacting the efficiency of service delivery and their life quality.

For every child, Support and Care

How can you make a difference?

Under the direct supervision of the Human Resources manager (P-4) and technical guidance of Regional Staff Counsellor, the counsellor will provide individual psychosocial counselling to staff and their family members in need, promoting work-life balance and healthy habits in staff, as well as disseminating psychoeducational materials and webinars in collaboration with the Regional Staff Counsellor. He/she should be familiar with basic principles and approaches to the Psychosocial First Aid (PFA). The Counsellor will have responsibility for the administration of a range of stress management activities, including support to the Office management in planning and implementation of a staff wellbeing strategy in line with the UN Workplace Mental Health Strategy and UNDSS standard operational procedure on critical incident stress.

Summary of key functions/accountabilities

The Staff Counsellor will provide the support to UNICEF HCO offices and managers to promote offices’ and teams’ resilience and foster a positive working environment by:

• Applying principles of psychology to resolve problems that may arise in the workplace.
• Performing regular assessments of psycho-social risk factors affecting staff adversely and proposing a course to remove or modify these to improve staff’s performance, job engagement, work-life balance and staff’s behavior within the workplace.
• Collaborate with UNICEF management and liaise with mental health professionals with the objective of establishing a network of professionals ready to support and intervene in cases of a need.
• Providing support and consultancy to leadership and management on organizational culture, workplace diversity, equity and inclusion, management styles, hybrid work modalities, team dynamics, learning and motivation, communication expectations and feedback.
• When feasible, carrying out scientific research of organizational behavior and processes.
• Supporting newly joined staff through the onboarding process (conducting resilience briefings prior to start date, adjustment briefings 2 months after start date)

2. The Staff Counsellor will design and implement workplace interventions to strengthen individual coping and foster a positive work environment (e.g. culture change, promotion of UNICEF core values, enhancement of teams’ cohesion, collegiality, mutual support and care in the offices and within teams) by:

• Facilitating regular activities to increase staff awareness and promote the development of personal, team’s and offices’ well-being plans through field well-being missions and remotely.
• Cooperating with HR teams in their activities to integrate well-being programs into their learning strategies.
• Assist in the development and implementation of a stress management programme for UNICEF Haiti Office.
• Analysing data using statistical methods and applications to evaluate the outcomes and effectiveness of workplace programs.

 3. The Staff Counsellor will facilitate effective stress management interventions for all staff by:

• Providing staff with individual and group counselling (i.e. assessment, short-term intervention, referral), following self-referral or referral by the supervisor or another professional.
• Facilitating referrals to external mental health professionals for psychological / psychiatric support (including coordination with UN Medical Services).
• Guidance to supervisors and senior management on the management of staff where mental health conditions are involved.
• Identifying adequate local resources for referrals whenever necessary, especially for cases requiring referrals for further mental health support.
• Supporting staff members with mental health conditions by providing rehabilitation strategies and the staff’s return-to-work intervention.
• Strengthening a network of Peer Support Volunteers (PSV), including the training and technical supervision of the Peer Support Volunteers.
• Serving as the focal point for exchanging information on referral and consultant resources.
• Employing a holistic approach while providing emergency psycho-social support to staff who have been involved in critical incidents.
• Contacting the affected staff member(s) via various communication channels, offering practical support, psycho-education, psychological first aid and referral information.
• Facilitating appropriate traumatic stress interventions to staff and their dependents.
• Advising the leadership on emergency psycho-social support management.
• Coordinating with UNDSS, Regional Staff Counsellor, agency counsellors, and Peer Support Volunteers to ensure adequate psycho-social support during emergencies.
• Contribute to effective global policies on staff mental health and well-being and perform administrative duties, including participating in regional meetings and other activities, completing reporting requirements, etc.
• Coordinating the collaboration with external mental health organizations in supporting mental health and wellbeing for Haiti CO.
• Travel to the Field Office in order to implement preventative and mitigating stress management activities for the staff, if security situation allows.
• Provide monthly reports to the management, Human Resources and to the Regional Staff Counsellor including online reporting of statistics.
• Provision of pre- and post-deployment briefings to staff deploying to all duty stations in Haiti.

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

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in clinical psychology, organizational psychology, psychiatry, counselling, clinical social work or related mental health profession.
• Additional training or certification in staff support and traumatic/critical incident stress as well as a broad range of related fields, such as Employee Assistance Program, alcohol/substance abuse, family counselling, coaching, stress management, trauma management, secondary trauma is desired.
• A minimum of five (5) years of national and preferably international professional experience in staff support, human behavior, and performance, learning and motivation; psychological research methods, assessment and treatment of behavioral and affective disorders, cross-cultural communications and training, and related areas, preferably gained within the UN system or international development/humanitarian aid sector.
• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency is considered an asset.
• Fluency in French and a working knowledge of English are required. Knowledge of another UN language is an asset.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: UNICEF Values

UNICEF competencies required for this post are…

(1) Builds and maintains partnerships (2) Demonstrates self-awareness and ethical awareness (3) Drive to achieve results for impact (4) Innovates and embraces change (5) Manages ambiguity and complexity (6) Thinks and acts strategically (7) Works collaboratively with others (8) Nurtures, leads and manages people.

During the recruitment process, we test candidates following the competency framework. Familiarize yourself with our competency framework and its different levels: competency framework here.

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.
We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF strongly encourages the use of flexible working arrangements.
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 is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. 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.

Remarks:

UNICEF’s active commitment towards diversity and inclusion is critical to deliver the best results for children. For this position, eligible and suitable female are encouraged to apply.

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance.  Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station, which will be facilitated by UNICEF, is required for IP positions. Appointments are also subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid). Government employees that are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government before taking up an assignment with UNICEF. UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

The successful candidate for this emergency recruitment MUST be available to commence work within 31 days of receiving an offer.