Country: Ethiopia

Organization: Oxfam GB

Closing date: 5 Jan 2022

About us

Oxfam is a global community who believe poverty isn’t inevitable. It’s an injustice that can be overcome. We are shop volunteers, women’s right activists, marathon runners, aid workers, coffee farmers, street fundraisers, goat herders, policy experts, campaigners, water engineers and more. And we won’t stop until everyone can live life without poverty for good.

Oxfam GB is a member of international confederation of 21 organizations working together with partners and local communities in the areas of humanitarian, development and campaigning, in more than 90 countries.

Our values and commitment to safeguarding

Oxfam is committed to preventing any type of unwanted behavior at work including sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse, lack of integrity and financial misconduct; and committed to promoting the welfare of children, young people, adults and beneficiaries with whom Oxfam GB engages. Oxfam expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment through our code of conduct. We place a high priority on ensuring that only those who share and demonstrate our values are recruited to work for us.

The post holder will undertake the appropriate level of training and is responsible for ensuring that they understand and work within the safeguarding policies of the organization.

OUR WORK IN ETHIOPIA

Since the early 1970s, we have been working to address the underlying causes of poverty and marginalization by focusing on developing sustainable livelihoods, providing water and sanitation, agriculture, climate research, gender, and humanitarian issues

Job details

DIVISION: Finance

TEAM: Finance and System

LOCATION: Addis Ababa with 30% frequent travel Oxfam operations areas, Ethiopia**

CONTRACT TYPE: Fixed Term contract for two (2) years with possibilities of contract extension

GRADE: C1 National

JOB FAMILY: Finance

SALARY: As per the Oxfam benefit package

HOURS: 37.5 per week

FLEXIBILE WORKING

We believe flexible working is key to building the Oxfam of the future, so we’re open to talking through the type of flexible arrangements which might work for you. This is a full-time role; however, Oxfam offers various flexible arrangements which candidates can discuss with the Recruiting Manager at the interview stage**

TEAM PURPOSE:

The Finance and Systems team provides professional, business-focussed finance and IT service, delivering a proactive solution-based approach for resolving issues and ensuring that the operational business requirements are effectively managed to deliver organizational results and support the achievement of program outcomes.

JOB PURPOSE:

The Head of Finance and Systems has overall responsibility and control for all financial aspects of the country’s strategy. This includes quality financial management and planning in the Country program, ensuring timely and quality financial reports as required both internally or externally, accountable for the implementation of defined areas of work within the Finance function including people management, and ensuring compliance to all relevant Government, Donor and Oxfam policies, procedures and guidelines.

It is responsible for the strategic development and implementation of effective and efficient finance and systems across the country program; supports Oxfam’s program impact through ensuring the financial and IT systems alignment to the needs of the strategic objectives and program standards in the country. Gives strategic support to resource mobilization, utilization, and donor reporting and ensures the procedures in the country are aligned with the Ethiopia Law and according to Oxfam policies and procedures.

POST HOLDER REPORTS TO Country Director

JOBS REPORTING TO THIS POST Finance Coordinators and Senior IT Officer and Matrix management of the Field Finance teams

BUDGET RESPONSIBILITY Yes

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Leadership and Management

• Provide direct support to the Country Director, and the Programme Managers in the field on all matters of program and grants management with a view to ensuring quality program development and implementation standards are met.
• Provide leadership to the finance and systems unit, ensuring the best possible support to the program and advice to the country management team.
• Ensuring all finance and system functions operate in an effective manner, complying with all Oxfam requirements and procedures.
• Liaising with the managers in the country in order to resolve problems related to the effective functioning of program function with finance and system support.
• Provide strategic advice to the operations management team.

Financial Management

• Provide leadership to the financial strategy development, to optimize the organization’s financial performance and strategic position.
• Contribute fully to the development of organization strategy across all areas of the business, challenging assumptions and decision-making as appropriate and providing financial analysis and guidance on all activities, plans, targets, and projects.
• Lead internal audits to guarantee the proper quality of the office’s financial information.
• Ensure that organization financial systems are robust, compliant, and support current activities and future growth.
• Work with senior teams to grow the business, formulating strategies and plans including corporate budgeting processes.
• Establish a high level of credibility and manage strong working relationships with external parties including government and donors.
• Ensure budget deadlines are met and that the budget approval process is completed on a timely basis
• Ensure the management of budget review meetings to ensure that there is the correct information available to make allocation decisions
• Manage the review of the monthly financial reconciliations from programs and ensure that a risk-based approach to the level of reviews and checks is done and that feedback is given and followed up promptly
• Manage the foreign exchange policy for Oxfam including monitoring its impact throughout the year
• With programs, ensure Oxfam is operating legally and any new issues are highlighted early
• Responsible to liaise with the funding team to ensure that all donor reporting requirements are met, including proposals, budgets, and donor reporting liaising as required with HECA Regional Funding unit, Oxford, and donors as required.
• Ensure that all proposals and contracts are developed with sound, reliable, and achievable financial inputs for all aspects of costs: indirect, direct, program, support, and all other costs.
• Ensure that country and program finances remain healthy by having a clear view shared with the Leadership Team of both funding pipeline, structural costs, and restricted costs to complete grants/programs.
• Maintain risk oversight of country activities, ensuring that monthly financial & non-financial reports are produced and shared with Leadership Team that lead to meaningful actions to improve and progress the country's activities.**Month End and Year-End Procedures**
• Ensure Oxfam month-end procedures are performed in a timely manner i.e. month-end balance sheet, month-end financial report, funding report, ledger soft, and hard close.
• Provide financial reporting to the regional platform monthly
• Ensure the completion of year-end consolidation review including restricted funding calculations on a timely and accurate basis
• Work with the finance teams to ensure any issues found during the audit process are managed effectively

Information Systems

• Responsible for the delivery within the program of the organizational information systems strategy, working within organizational parameters, to facilitate communications, information flow, and management information, ensuring appropriate use of information technology-based systems
• Ensures that there is good and efficient communication with the Information Systems team in the country ensuring an appropriate level of coordination and collaborative ways of working.
• Provide continuous follow-up to IS process and day-by-day operation ensuring compliance with minimum standards and policies.
• Manage and oversee the IT function by monitoring IT infrastructure and making recommendations for improvements

Compliance

• Maintain an overview of Oxfam policy, systems, and procedures relevant to finance and systems and ensure that developments are communicated and implemented appropriately through regular reviews.
• Advise program management of any changes/developments in government policies, statutory and legal requirements in Ethiopia about the finance function.
• Ensure the program meets system requirements such as PeopleSoft Goal, OPAL, and CRIMSON.
• Take the lead in preparing for audits, sourcing external auditors, and supporting program staff in preparing for external and internal audits.
• Ensure asset management is in line with organizational/donor requirements as well as generally accepted accounting principles.
• In collaboration with the CMT, prepare and submit the annual report and other statutory documents.

People development and Management

• Motivate and support the Finance and systems Team, providing leadership, inspiration, capacity building, and guidance and ensuring that the management of the team is in line with Oxfam’s HR policies and procedures.
• Lead and develop finance and systems teams across Oxfam Ethiopia locations.
• Establish effective relations with program managers and other managers at all levels for the application of matrix management responsibility of finance staff based in operating locations.
• Ensures that team members have access to staff development opportunities, identifies and addresses capacity gaps, and provides ongoing counselling and support team members
• With support from Human Resources, manage the life cycle of individuals within the team from pre-recruitment to exit, including performance management processes, people’s development, and working with HR on issues such as disciplinary matters among others.
• Oversee the adherence to Oxfam minimum financial standards including anti-bribery, anti-fraud, and safeguarding policies
• Set annual staff performance goals and perform quarterly and annual staff performance appraisal – Let’s talk process.

Person specification

Most importantly, every individual at Oxfam GB needs to be able to:

· Live our values of INCLUSION, ACCOUNTABILITY, EMPOWERMENT, SOLIDARITY, COURAGE AND EQUALITY

Our Values

• Equality: We believe everyone has the right to be treated fairly and to have the same rights and opportunities.
• Empowerment: We acknowledge and seek to expand people’s agency over their lives and the decisions that impact them.
• Solidarity: We join hands, support, and collaborate across boundaries in working towards a just and sustainable world.
• Inclusiveness: We embrace diversity and difference and value the perspectives and contributions of all people and communities in their fight against poverty and injustice.
• Accountability: We take responsibility for our actions and inaction and hold ourselves accountable to the people we work with and for.
• Courage: We speak truth to power and act with conviction on the justice of our causes.

· Ensure you commit to our THREE ORGANISATIONAL ATTRIBUTES:

• Be committed to equal opportunities: demonstrating sensitivity to cultural differences and gender equality.
• Be willing to learn and apply gender mainstreaming, women’s rights, and diversity and inclusion across all aspects of your work.
• Be committed to undertaking Oxfam’s safeguarding training and adhering to relevant policies, to ensure all people who come into Oxfam are as safe as possible.
• Ensure you actively ADOPT OXFAM’S FEMINIST LEADERSHIP APPROACH and applying the principles and twelve practices in your work. Read more about this here:

For this role, we have selected two of the most relevant feminist Leadership practices for this role (which you can read more about here.

• Self-Awareness
• Mutual accountability
• Strategic Thinking and Judgment

SKILS, Experience, Knowledge & Competencies

Essential

• Post-graduate academic qualification in Business Administration or related discipline with relevant experience, with 10 years international NGO managerial experience out of which 5 years should be supervisory/managerial experience.
• Demonstrated experience of successfully leading the implementation of operational improvements and the persistence to achieve change in a challenging environment
• Good understanding of information systems and information technology with a sound knowledge of their development and capabilities
• Leadership, management, negotiation, and coordination skills (of people and projects) in a complex multi-stakeholder, networked, global, and largely virtual environment
• Demonstrate leadership behaviours and ways of working within the program team that promotes value addition, non-duplication of roles across functions, empowerment and role enrichment of team, and culture of cost-effectiveness by all functional managers.
• Development of customer service attitude within the program team and a focus on integrated teamwork.
• Proactively address the interface between different functions and program teams in-country to ensure efficiency and accountability
• Excellent personal communication skills, in written and verbal English, with high impact influencing and persuasive skills. Able to use different approaches to achieve followership
• Demonstrated organizational awareness and understanding of knowledge management
• Strong analytical and conceptual thinking skills; able to understand complex issues and translate them into simple, workable actions and plans
• Persuasive influencing, motivation, team building, and facilitation skills
• Good understanding of management roles and dynamics in organizations
• Developing organizational strategies and plans for financial management effectiveness and measuring the effectiveness
• Experience in managing and developing others, including direct line management
• Experience in leading and managing conflict resolution
• Ability to liaise with a wide range of people, both internally and externally at very senior levels (OI, Executing Affiliate, and other senior organizational leaders) with credibility, tact, and diplomacy
• Excellent interpersonal and negotiation skills with demonstrable ability to lead, influence and motivate others.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, able to explain complex technical/legal issues, and build a considered analysis of taking different approaches
• Excellent in the use of computers and Microsoft, especially spreadsheets (Excel), accounting packages, word processing (Word), and PowerPoint. Competent in the use of email packages

Desirable

• Leadership qualities and people management expertise to provide direction and effective support to a multidisciplinary and multicultural team
• Strong commitment to Oxfam’s purpose, a broad understanding of the work culture in the “development” sector and its impact on key areas of responsibility, and a commitment to humanitarian principles and action
• Effective verbal and written communication skills, including high-level interpersonal and representational capabilities; fluency in written and spoken English and Amharic
• Ability to operate and think strategically, coupled with proven analytical skills and the use of these to problem solve and make firm decisions
• Understanding of gender and diversity considerations within key areas of responsibility and commitment to addressing inequalities in the workplace and the program
• Qualified member of an accountancy body or holder of an equivalent qualification
• Meet the requirement for a commercially astute, articulate, technically strong, dynamic, insightful, and influential leader with the ability to operate at both strategic and operational levels.
• Ability to operate and think strategically, coupled with proven analytical skills and the use of these to problem solve and make firm decisions
• Strong budget and personnel management skills
• Ability to handle high levels of pressure and critical decision-making.
• Strong IT skills, always being ahead of new technologies

Safer recruitment: All offers of employment are subject to satisfactory references and appropriate screening checks (which can include counterterrorism, safeguarding and criminal records checks).

Oxfam GB also participates in the Inter Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. In line with this Scheme, we will request information from job applicants’ previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation when the applicant left employment. By submitting an application, the job applicant confirms his/her understanding of these recruitment procedures.

All offers of employment will be subject to satisfactory references and appropriate screening checks, which can include criminal records and terrorism finance checks.

We are committed to ensuring diversity and gender equality within our organization and encourage applicants from diverse backgrounds to apply.

DBS CHECK REQUIRED No

How to apply

As part of your online application, please upload your up-to-date CV and a covering letter explaining your suitability against the essential criteria in the job profile through CLICK HERE or using Oxfam's internal /External application portal on or before 05 January 2022.

Your application will be shortlisted based on your CV and your responses to the above questions. You need not comment on your suitability against the essential criteria in the job profile.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.