Human Resources Manager - Syria

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is a non-governmental, humanitarian organization with 60 years of experience in helping to create a safer and more dignified life for refugees and internally displaced people. NRC advocates for the rights of displaced populations and offers assistance within the shelter, education, emergency food security, legal assistance, and water,sanitation and hygiene sectors.

The Norwegian Refugee Council has approximately 5000 committed and competent employees involved in projects across four continents. In addition, NRC runs one of the world’s largest standby rosters -NORCAP, with 650 professionals, ready to be deployed on 72 hours notice when a crisis occurs

NRC is assisting more than 500.000 people inside Syria providing over 1,7 million humanitarian services per year. Using innovative approaches, working through strong field offices and dedicated staff, NRC is reaching some of the most vulnerable communities in hard to reach areas across all of Syria.

NRC’s Syria Response Office is located in Amman, leading the response across the country through strategic leadership and dedicated support. In line with NRC’s new strategy for 2018-2020, we are expanding, changing and renewing our team to ensure we are able to scale up and help more people in better ways.

With this anticipated evolution of the Syria Response Office, we are looking for new team members to support us in this next step. To help build a cohesive team NRC is currently recruiting for the following four key positions:

1)    An experienced leader to be our Head of Support, managing strategic initiatives and change processes aimed at making our operation fit for purpose and able to reach our goals.

2)    A passionate HR Manager who will develop and lead our strategic HR work across NRC’s Syria Response. It is a strategic leadership role with a broad scope who will work through others to ensure that NRC’s most important resources - our staff – are taken care of and able to perform to their best.

3)    A Special Advisor for Leadership and Capacity Building, who will be based in Damascus and travel across Syria to give strategic support to our leaders, as well as lead on the important work of developing NRC’s next generation of national managers inside Syria.

4)    A hard working and motivated HR Coordinator to lead our HR team in one of our largest Area Offices. The HR Coordinator is responsible for the overall implementation of NRC’s HR systems and procedures and will have a direct impact on our work to assist and protect Syrians in need.

The recruitment processes will be done in parallel to ensure we hire new team members with complementary skills and experience since these positions will work closely together.

Position Description:

The HR Manager is arguably one of the most important leadership positions in NRC’s Syria Response. The future success of NRC’s ability to make a difference for people in Syria is directly linked to its ability to manage and build its human resources. In 2017, we doubled the number of our staff. In 2018, we are planning to than double again. The HR manager will have a key role in technically leading all the different HR teams in the field to be able to recruit the right staff, retain and develop talent, and build systems that is able to provide colleagues with the best possible staff care in very challenging circumstances.

The HR Manager will lead a HR country team based in Amman, but also provide support and direction to all HR teams in NRC’s Area Offices inside Syria. The person will be expected to provide contextual support by remote, enabling and building the capacity of field teams to be operationally independent. The HR Manager will have a wide thematic area of responsibility covering all aspects of HR. The person will play a key role in supporting the leadership of NRC’s Syria Response in developing the organization, incl ensuring setup of teams are optimal and according to NRC standard. The HR Manager is expected to be an active participant in strategic change processes that involve staff and ensuring that the human aspects of any change is taken into consideration.

Our ideal candidate:

NRC is looking for a person with passion and expertise in HR as a professional field. The ideal candidate will have a proved track record of being excellent at building the capacity of national teams, including ideally experience in Training of Trainers. Experience from strategic HR initiatives such as re-structuring/change management will be valuable. Experience and interest in key areas such as recruitment, performance management and also difficult disciplinary processes will be mandatory. A keen understanding of the wider concept of Staff Care, including follow up to critical incidences, will also be valuable.

Key Professional competencies:

• Minimum 5 years of experience from working as a senior HR Manager in a humanitarian/recovery context
• Experience from strategic HR initiatives such as re-structuring/change management
• Experience and interest in building the capacity of national teams, including ideally experience in Training of Trainers
• Experience with programme scale up
• Knowledge of the context in the Middle East would be an asset

For more information related to the position responsibilities please refer to the full Job Description, attached at the bottom of the page.

Additional Information:

Candidates are encouraged to apply early, as applications may be screened prior to the vacancy deadline

Contract period: 24 months

Duty Station:  Amman, Jordan

Salary/benefits: According to NRC’s salary scale and terms and conditions

Approved health certificate will be requested before contract start

NB: Please enter the geographical location in the "Company name" field for both company and location on your application.