British High Commission Regional Crisis Adviser - Jobs in South Africa
British High Commission Regional Crisis Adviser - Jobs in South Africa
Job CategoryForeign and Commonwealth Office (Consular Roles)
Job Subcategory
Consular
Job Description
British diplomatic posts overseas are at the frontline of a UK government response to an overseas crisis affecting British people and interests.
This role focuses on ensuring that they have the right, plans and skills to be able to respond to a range of different crisis scenarios.
Within your region you will be responsible for understanding the risks that different posts face and their overall preparedness and providing support and advice to help them improve their ability to respond.
You will be expected to champion the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s (FCO) clear crisis management methodology and training products, supported and directed by the FCO Crisis Management department in London and working closely with our regional consular staff.
Although this role is based in Pretoria/Cape Town, you will need to be able to form close working relationships with the posts in your region, prioritizing those with the greatest need for support and travelling to deliver training and advice.
You will benefit from excellent learning and development opportunities, which will allow you to deepen your crisis management skills as well as a supportive network of colleagues both in London and overseas.
Roles and Responsibilities:
Role:
Crisis Preparedness: Develop a coherent approach to crisis management across Southern and Central Africa and Indian Ocean Islands by supporting crisis preparedness for the regional UK diplomatic posts providing high quality guidance, and training so that posts are well prepared to effectively respond to a crisis, in line with FCO London Crisis Management Department (CMD) policy and guidance.
Crisis Response: To provide support and advice to posts experiencing or approaching a crisis to ensure the most effective response
Crisis Improvement: To maintain a good understanding of the crisis risks within your region, providing input to and quality assurance of post crisis management plans, highlighting key risks to Consular Regional Directors (CRDs) and CMD and applying lessons from crises and exercises.
Maintain good relationships with both internal and external crisis management stakeholders in order to enhance regional risk assessment and horizon scanning.
Responsibilities:
Quality Assurance: To advise posts on development of their crisis management plans (CMPs), and crisis preparedness working to achieve a consistent quality across the region, merging local knowledge with central crisis management guidance.
Work with CMD’s Planning Team to identify risks, capability and capacity gaps and to helps posts take steps to improve their preparedness.
Training & Exercising: Deliver effective crisis workshops, tabletop and design semi-live exercises in your region liaising closely with the CMD Training & Exercising Team and using the latest training approaches and materials.
Identify any potential learning/skills gaps in crisis management techniques and work with CMD to address them.
Help CMD to coordinate and prioritize regional exercises, and assist in the delivery of overseas training events.
Support crisis managers to encourage colleagues to complete the crisis content of the Diplomatic Academy’s foundation level.
Champion the various learning methods to help promote and develop crisis management learning in region.
Stakeholder Engagement: To actively support Posts’ engagement with host governments and major UK crisis management stakeholders to ensure good understanding of host country and regional crisis structures and maintain up-to-date liaison contacts.
Lessons Learned: participate in, and facilitate where appropriate (e.g. for locally managed crises), the crisis lessons learned process.
To identify, record and share best practice regionally.
Working with CMD to ensure lessons learned are taken forward and incorporated back into CMPs across the region.
Crisis Response: working with CMD and the CRD provide advice and support to posts in crisis.
Resources managed: Responsible for managing a regional travel budget
Essential Qualifications, Skills and Experience
Excellent English language skills (written and oral)
Understanding of and an ability to
work in an international or governmental organization.
Excellent inter-personal, communication and team working skills.
Excellent organizational skills and a proactive approach.
Resilience, with ability to work unsupervised and innovate
Self starter with strong time management skills - able to work to deadlines and targets and manage a sometimes heavy workload.
Excellent IT skills (Outlook, PowerPoint, Word and Excel)
Desirable Qualifications, Skills and Experience
Familiarity with Foreign Office Crisis Management policy and procedures would be helpful. The successful candidate will benefit from training and development through the FCO’s Diplomatic Academy Consular and Crisis faculty. This includes the opportunity to develop skills along a number of different crisis management ‘learning pathways’.
The ability to deliver training in a professional environment, ideally with an externally validated professional accreditation, such as CIPD.
Familiarity with crisis management issues and techniques and an ability to understand risks across a range issues
Familiarity with UK consular procedures
Required Competencies
Leading and Communicating, Collaborating and Partnering, Delivering at Pace, Demonstrating Resilience
Other benefits and conditions of employment
Learning and development opportunities:
The successful candidate will need to be able to attend a training course in the UK or in the region
Working patterns:
This job offers a great deal of autonomy in how you manage your time, although with high expectations to deliver a top quality service. We offer a flexible working policy to suit individual circumstances, by prior agreement.
Please note the travel requirement (approximately 10 weeks foreign travel per year) and the potential to be asked to respond to an incident or emergency involving British nationals.
The British High Commission pays in full for the Key Care Plus option on Discovery Health for staff including spouses/partners and dependants.
Once you have successfully completed your probation the British High Commission will contribute 9% of your monthly salary to a Provident Fund.
Annual leave entitlement of 25 days.
Working hours per week of 36.5
Additional Information
This role will be line managed by a crisis planning officer based in London, with oversight provided by the relevant Consular Regional Director.
Given the regional nature of this role you will need to be available to travel throughout the region of responsibility.
Please complete the application form in full as the information provided is used during screening.
Please check your application carefully before you submit, as no changes can be made once submitted.
The British High Commission will never request any payment or fees to apply for a position.
Employees recruited locally by the British High Commission in Pretoria are subject to Terms and Conditions of Service according to local employment law in South Africa.
All candidates must be legally able to work and reside in the country of the vacancy with the correct visa/work permit status or demonstrate eligibility to obtain the relevant permit.
The responsibility lies on the successful candidate to;
Obtain the relevant permit
Pay fees for the permit
Make arrangements to relocate
Meet the costs to relocation
The British High Commission do not sponsor visas/work permits except where it may be local practice to do so.
Employees who are not eligible to pay local income tax: e.g. certain third-country nationals and spouses/partners of UK diplomats will have their salaries abated by an equivalent amount.
Information about the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Competency Framework can be found on this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-service-competency-framework Please note: AA=A1, AO=A2, EO=B3, HEO=C4, SEO=C5
Reference checking and security clearances will be conducted on successful candidates.
If you don’t already hold a valid SA Police Clearance Certificate, we recommend that you apply for the certificate at the time of your application.
How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should apply online by 24th May 2019
For more information and job application details, see; British High Commission Regional Crisis Adviser - Jobs in South Africa
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