Head of People, Culture & Administration

Title: Head of People, Culture & Administration

Reporting to: Country Director, Kenya

Direct reports: IT & Security Administrator

Senior Procurement & Logistics Officer

People & Culture Officer

Office Assistant

Admin Assistant

Relationships: Externally with strategic partners and internally with colleagues in all offices and the UK.

Financial scope: TBC

Location: Nairobi, Kenya.

Grade: 8

Travel: Within scope

ACCOUNTABILITIES

Leadership and Strategic Alignment

• Provide leadership of the HR & Administration function, ensuring alignment of our work to strategy and identifying the right people practices to attract, retain and engage an inspiring and high performing country office team.

• Actively contribute to the development of the Annual Business Plan (ABP), ensuring that it incorporates global people priorities and support all country teams to incorporate people priorities into their planning and budgeting in support of change ambitions.

 • Provide strategic input to shape our strategic direction and ensure effective flows of information between management and staff, building buy-in and ownership of our strategy.

• Lead, manage, mentor and coach a high performing HR & Admin team with the right skills and working environment to support other teams.

• Work with SMT members and their teams to ensure they have the right people, capabilities, and structures in place to achieve change ambitions.

• Work with the Senior Management Team (SMT) to develop and implement professional growth in Kenya, actively fostering a culture that provides opportunities for learning, development, and growth of emerging talent

• Promote an organisational culture of learning and achieving change at scale through collaboration, communication, and shared ownership of our change ambitions; helping others to accept new ideas and adopt new behaviours.

• Actively promote and encourage a culture of inter-team collaboration, learning and joined-up planning and working – especially between operations, programme delivery and thematic leadership – to enable us to achieve change ambitions

• Be an advocate for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in Kenya, taking advice and guidance from expertise in the global organisation to develop a plan for EDI and gender inclusion that includes an enabling culture and is non-discriminatory.

• Contribute to quarterly internal reporting against the ABP and KPIs – leading the preparation of people sections and improving performance against relevant people indicators.

• Build the HR & Admin team’s understanding of our change ambitions and how they drive our work

• Work alongside global HR colleagues, helping each other learn and share good practice together

Strengthening Profile, Generating Funding and Managing Relationships

• Ensure that the required legal requirements for operations are always up to date and local compliance is adhered to in Kenya.

• Maintain operational relationships with internal teams both in Kenya, and UK to ensure team effectiveness in proper documentation, especially regarding audits.

• Assist, coordinate and maintain relationships with consultants (for example on salary surveys).

• Responsible for ensuring that people and admin priorities are included in all proposals to support and staff all offices in Kenya.

Delivering Quality

• Identify and lead improvements to the day to day Kenya HR function e.g. reviewing policies, improving contracting arrangements and templates, data management approaches to comply with GDPR, statutory compliance, embracing HR best practice and promoting effectiveness

• Develop and maintain effective and transparent recruitment processes and ensure that key positions are filled with the caliber of staff who are motivated to meet ongoing organisational challenges. Support hiring managers in developing high quality JDs and partner with recruiting managers throughout the recruitment process to identify and recruit the right talent for the success of our programmes

• Ensure that employees are provided with an inspiring and effective Induction programme

• Promote and build capability for employees and managers in using the Be Your Best Process so that is become a valued tool to help performance

• Work with managers to identify staff learning and development needs, compile, prepare, and coordinate needs and support managers and staff to access L&D opportunities, including ELearning platforms, in a fair and transparent way.

• Ensure our people policies and procedures are compliant with legal, donor and good practice requirements and are understood and applied at all times

• Provide support to employees and managers where there are employment relations concerns e.g., grievances, team dynamics. Understand the different perspectives and approaches to effectively support on cross-functional and cross-cultural challenges/individual differences.

• Act as the Safeguarding focal point for Kenya, promoting the practices that will safeguard the vulnerable people with whom we work and ensuring that all staff and consultants understand our policies, and reporting mechanisms. Ensure that any safeguarding issues or concerns are raised at the appropriate level in a timely fashion and contribute to addressing any issues as part of a situation management team, where appropriate.

• Implement our global reward policy through pay benchmarking, grading, and leadership of the day-to-day payroll administration and lead the remuneration and nomination committees for Kenya, ensuring appropriate analyses in advance, proposing ways forward (in coordination with finance and Country Director) and facilitating the process.

• Promote, analyse and facilitate the creation of action plans for the biennial staff survey that are owned by the management team so that we improve employee engagement and positivity about working for Practical Action

• Oversee, or directly deliver, a quality HR administrative service that includes record keeping

for the whole employee lifecycle e.g. contracting, annual leave, policy sign up etc.

• Play a role in restructuring processes, advising, participating, and guiding communications.

• Lead and manage investigations as required

• Collect, analyse and action plan in response to HR Metrics for example takings steps to reduce the gender pay gap

• Use data to analyze trends in terms of human resources, systems, and structures to identify issues, develop and recommend related reviews including changes in policies, procedures and practices as well as structures to match the changing environment.

• Work closely with the Staff Welfare Committee and facilitate staff welfare activities, issues, agendas, and retreat.

• Support the Safety & Security Focal Point in the implementation of staff health, safety, and security.

• Oversee all administrative functions in the Nairobi office.

• In coordination with area coordinators/ leads of field offices, ensure that all HR and administrative functions in field offices are carried out according to established policies and procedures.

IT and Data Protection

• Ensure all staff are aware of the IT and computer use policies and that they are fully complied with, including use of passwords, asset controls and appropriate use of equipment.

• Ensure compliance with privacy and data protection rules, working closely with UK GDPR team.

• Oversee the development and use of the technological infrastructure (network, computer systems and applications) to ensure optimal performance and cost effectiveness 

PERSON PROFILE

To be successful in the role, the ideal candidate will be able to demonstrate: 

Experience & Knowledge 

An exceptional leader with a passion for People, and a proven track record of making bold and innovative investments in talent to deliver concrete business outcomes. 

• A Bachelor’s degree in Public Administration, Human Resource Management, or similar discipline

• 5 – 7 years of post-graduate working experience in human resource management and administration

• Knowledge in HR best practice and innovative new practices

• Ability to provide strategic inputs

• Knowledge, understanding and application of employment law in Kenya.

• Experience in Learning and Development of staff, office operations, organisational development, and institutional practices

• Operational experience of working within a busy HR and Admin team environment providing timely and high-quality advice and work in all aspects of HR (recruitment, reward, employee relations, employment legislation, learning and development, change management, policies, and processes)

• Able to maintain a high level of confidentiality.

• IT skills particularly MS Word, Excel, and Outlook, with experience of using HR databases, online recruitment tools and Intranets.

• Outstanding interpersonal relationship building and employee coaching skills.

• Ability to effectively represent the country office and our work.

• Excellent oral presentation skills and strong communication skills in written and oral English.

• High levels of demonstrated skills in prioritizing task and meeting deadlines. 

Desirable

• Fluency in other languages.

• Existing strong relationships and networks within the geographic area.

• Post-graduate degree in relevant subject.

• • Knowledge and experience in application of gender equality principles in execution of the mandate