Regional Innovation Administrative Assistant

The International Rescue Committee responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, IRC offers life-saving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. At work today in more than 40 countries and in 22 U.S. cities, IRC restores safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted by conflict or disaster. IRC leads the way from harm to home.

Job Overview/Summary: The Middle East Research and Innovation Hub (Airbel) work on the research and development of innovative projects and initiatives to provide humanitarian assistance at scale. Often, the innovation team's work is unique and requires operational facilitation and mediation between the hub staff and IRC operational departments such as Finance, HR and Supply Chain. The Middle East Innovation Hub works closely with IRC operational units (Finance, HR and Supply Chain) to develop work processes and relevant tools to facilitate the hub operational needs. Examples of the unique activities developed by the Middle East Hub the Community Design Group (CDG), Design Talent Pool and Digital User Panel.

The Regional Hub is seeking a motivated Administrative Assistant to support with operational and admin related matters to streamline the work of the hub projects. The Admin Assistant will support Airbel Regional Hub across a range of administrative responsibilities that may change over time.There may also be scope to engage in project- work.The major responsibilities are listed below.

Major Responsibilities:

General

• Regularly meet with Hub staff to anticipate operational needs, including creating procurement plans, schedules for the translators, etc.
• Participate in Hub meetings and update on all operations related work, including any bottlenecks, etc.
• Administration:
• In collaboration with the HR team, support the hub staff with the admin work related to full time staff, including recruitment, onboarding, annual leave planning, timesheets, etc.
• Work with appropriate counter parts in country offices or HQ to manage the hub consultants’ administrative work by leading recruitment, maintaining a proper filing system of the consultant documents, track contracts and SOWs (statements of work) expiry date and process their extension when required, ensure the consultants’ fees are processed and paid without delays.
• Managing CDG (Community Design Group) and Outreach team:
• Act as the point person between CDG, outreach team, and hub staff, including holding regular meetings with CDG and outreach team, ensuring appropriate feedback loops between hub staff and CDG, identify and follow up on action points as required, etc.
• Receive and manage requests (from the hub staff and others) to work with the CDG and the outreach team.
• Advise on the suitable Community Designers based on their skill sets and the number of days worked (maintaining a balance between the numbers of days worked by each community designer).
• Communicate with the CDG via WhatsApp group to check their availability for specific tasks.
• Update the service contractor tracking sheet with the actual number of days worked by each service contractor and include task details such as the name of the project and the budget codes used to cover their cost.

• When needed, coordinate with Jordan Learning & Development Manager (HR) to provide IRC Way and PSEA trainings to new hires (not applicable for short-term consultants)
• Coordinate with Jordan Learning & Development Manager (HR) and other training providers to deliver capacity building and skills development trainings to the CDG and the Outreach teams.
• Support the hub staff with the paperwork required to attend specific training programs as part of their annual professional development budget.
• Translator time management: work with the innovation hub staff to update the translator tracking sheet with the transition services provided (live and written translation) and the budget codes used to cover each translation task.

Finance:

• Support the hub staff to complete and submit payment requests related to consultants, supply chain, service contracts, procurement, pretty cash, travel and any other relevant expense
• Based on the hub staff inquiries, provide budget code information to the hub staff based on the relevant project and its respective budget lines.
• On a quarterly basis, submit a payment request to the Jordan Cash unit for the CDG and Outreach team compensation.
• Follow-up with finance and cash department on the status of the submitted payment requests and troubleshot challenges to facilitate the payment process.
• Provide Regional Finance team with monthly staff Level of Effort information on a monthly basis.
• Support in budget preparation, spending reports and transaction tracking.

Supply Chain:

• Work with the innovation hub team to maintain updated procurement plans.
• Assist the project team in filling, submitting, and following up on Purchase Requests related to all Hub work, including related to good procurement, service procurement, communication or transportation allowances for participants in Hub activities, etc.
• Maintain clear communications between Supply Chain and Hub team, to ensure all parties are updated on status of needs and status of requests.
• Work with the finance team to submit requests for mobile lines to be used by CDG and other relevant projects.
• Manage and track the handover of the asset to service contractors, including the CDG and the outreach team.

Other Tasks:

• Support in the calendar invitation for hub’s meeting including, weekly meetings, quarterly and bi-annual review.
• Using the Hub box folder, maintain a proper filing system to ensure that all administrative documents are securely saved and accessible by the relevant staff members.
• Plan the admin work relate to the Community Design Group, which entails sending calendar invitations, booking meeting room, getting a security clearance, ordering and managing catering and maintaining attendance records.
• Support in the implementation of the SOPs related to the CDG, Outreach team and the Design Talent Pool.
• Support the regional innovation director in the design and implementation of the CDG fellowship program.

Key Working Relationships:

Position Reports to:Regional Innovation Operations Manager

Other Internal and/or external contacts:

Internal: work in close collaboration with regional finance, HR and supply chain

External:N/A