A. Essential Staffing The purpose of this section is to identify and recommend the positions required to achieve Sector strategic objectives. Implementation recommendations for staffing levels are made based on Sector wide workload and staffing analyses and the scope of the structural reorganization. Current Staffing Practices and Issues Over the past decade, the Education Sector has shifted from a highly specialized and internationally recognized organization with expertise residing in house to an organization in which many of the professionals have limited expertise and perform only general management and coordinating activities. This staffing issue is termed deprofessionalization. As vacancies have become available, posts have often been abolished or downgraded. As a short term solution to budget and funding issues, staff posts have been replaced with consultants, contractors and nonstaff, often of very limited (3 months) duration. Furthermore, abolishing 1
and downgrading posts has impacted the Sector s ability to promote talented individuals from within. Growth through promotions is limited because P5 positions, when they become vacant, are often abolished or downgraded, which has resulted in few experts capable of interacting with Ministries of Education. In addition to deprofessionalization, other current issues also impact staffing: Recruitment, a key enabler of staffing, is provided as a centralized HRM process delivered from Headquarters. The Sector needs and intends to become more active in this process in the future, working with HRM to simplify and speed up the process, while at the same time proactively recruiting to identify highly qualified, experienced staff. More attention to job descriptions, evaluations, and staff develop can also improve the quality of staff. Staffing and program budgets have been considered and funded in isolation from each other without attention to the level of staffing needed to carry out UNESCO priorities for the Sector. There are no clear linkages between staffing needs and budgetary 2
decisions, leaving the Sector without sufficient staff for commitments made. Currently, there is no central repository for staff and non staff data, and it is difficult to reconcile staffing data across multiple databases. Evaluative information on consultants is also not maintained. HRM is in the process of implementing the SAP Human Resources STEPS system for staff data and an SAP Contracting/Materials Management module. The Sector will work closely with HRM in implementing these programs and will use it as a base for the improvement of the Sector s personnel and contracting functions. Regional Guidelines have been developed to improve consistency in hiring and staffing but are not uniformly implemented. Presently, the Regional Bureaux have little or no role in staffing Educational Sector posts/positions in other offices across the region. As a result, staffing to achieve strategic balance across the region is limited. Given the role of the Regional Bureaux as the platform for providing expertise and the coordinator of such 3
educational program services in the region, the Regional Bureaux should play a greater role in personnel functions for the region. There is no program for staff development. This exacerbates the impact of deprofessionalization, as there are no strategies for improving the capabilities of either professional or general services staff. Future Staffing Must Resolve Current Issues Essential staffing must begin to address issues of deprofessionalization. Essential and optimal staffing must support and strengthening linkages between Education Sector Headquarters and Education Sector field operations. Essential staffing must be sufficient to achieve Sector objectives. Essential staffing of professionals must support the formation of communities of professionals experts involved in any 4
programme area working together to share ideas, lessons learned and the continual exchange of programme information. Optimal staffing must begin to address issues associated with centralized departments and the need for the sector to play a stronger role in process decentralization. Essential staffing must be determined, taking into account programmatic needs based on workload analysis, demand analysis and demand management. Program funds from both regular and extra budgetary sources must be taken into consideration. Creation of Human Resources Function within the Sector A key response to the personnel issues within the Sector is to establish a professional human resource function within the Sector that will work with HRM to improve and professionalize the Sector s personnel practices in such area as recruiting, selecting, and hiring of personnel, as well as in professional development, evaluation and performance management. 5
The Sector s approach to staffing needs to be led by a senior human resource professional who works with program managers to develop and maintain a high quality staff. A P4 or 5 Human Resource manager is needed in the Sector at Headquarters to begin this process immediately. In the next phase of reform and with this new position in place, the human resource capability in each Regional Bureaux will be analyzed, and recommendations for creating a regionally focused HR capacity will be developed. The possible creation of a regional HR focus to work in tandem with the Sector s HR Chief at HQ and with HRM would be consistent with the principle of decentralizing authority and accountability to the lowest effective level. The Regional Director should play a role in staffing Education Sector positions in all offices in the region. With the Regional Directors involved in the staffing process, there will be more strategic consistency in educational programs from Headquarters to the Regional Office to the field in terms of competencies, programmatic expertise, gender balance, and geographic representation. Further, the Regional office should guide regional program planning, coordination and monitoring. 6
B. Regional Bureaux Minimum Essential Staffing As noted earlier, under the Principle of Subsidiarity, the UNESCO Education Sector Regional Bureaux are the level from which expert services can be most effectively coordinated and provided to countries. Yet the Regional Bureaux, with the exception to some degree of the Asia and Pacific Region, are woefully understaffed, and given the size of the region served by Bangkok, it too is understaffed. The Sector reform process has analyzed staffing needs and staffing parity across all regions. A list of the minimum essential staffing needed in each region has been developed to guide current and future staffing decisions. The newly created positions are divided between those that are to be funded immediately from the 33/C5 Staff Budget and those to be funded over the next 18 months, or in the next biennium. Funding for some of these positions will come from positions at Headquarters that are being abolished as a part of the reform process. Bringing regional Bureaux up to minimal essential staffing levels will begin to insure that program based expertise resides in each region and is available to countries in each region. Providing this essential staffing 7
is a step toward regaining the professional expertise for which the Sector was once known. The recommendations will result in better linkages between Sector services at Headquarters and Sector services delivered in the field by providing specialists that can address specific program content areas needed in the field. These experts will also contribute to future program communities of practice with other professionals with similar expertise from across the Sector. The essential program posts, which should be created immediately in Bureaux where they do not already exist, are in the important priority program areas of Literacy, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), EducAids (the Sector s program for HIV/AIDS), Education Planning for Countries (UNESS process), and the Promotion of Public Education [Early Childhood (EC) through grade12]. ESD and EducAids positions are tied to UN Decades for which the sector is not expected to continue to need extensive numbers of staff after the decades are completed. Therefore, it is recommended that these positions be created on long term temporary contracts. It is further 8
recommended that program funds be used to create these positions immediately. If the Sector is to fulfill its mandate to lead these decades, it must have personnel in the Regional Bureaux dedicated to these programs. As it stands now, these important priority areas generally have no staff, and the responsibility for each of these programs in the region is added to an existing staff member s load who may be trying to cover 4 6 other areas. Each Region should also have a senior professional staff member who reports to the Regional Director and who has responsibility for working with the Director to support the functions of the Program Management Cycle (e.g. Program Planning, Budgeting, Implementing, Evaluating, Monitoring and Reporting). All of the posts listed above should be created immediately if possible. Other program positions considered essential in each Regional Bureaux include Teacher Training, Vocational/Workforce Education, Higher Education, Community College, Education Information Communication Technologies (ICT) and Knowledge Management. 9
Minimal essential staffing recommendations are set forth in the attached Staffing Table. Reflected in the table is the expectation that 18 new posts will be established in the Regional Bureaux and immediately funded, with 8 as regular posts and 10 positions to be hired with program funds on long term temporary contracts. It is anticipated that another 24 posts will be requested in the 34/C5. Two of the Regional Bureaux serve extremely large areas of need, as noted in an earlier section of this report. In the next phase of the reform process, creation of sub regional offices in both the Bangkok and Dakar regions will be studied, and if such expansions are recommended, additional staffing will be recommended to meet the needs of these large and diverse areas. The first table at the end of this Section includes minimal essential staffing levels for the regional Bureaux and identifies the positions that are currently in place and continuing, the positions recommended for immediate creation, and the positions that will be requested in the 34C5. 10
C. Headquarters Staffing Recommendation The current structure at Headquarters, which consists of six divisions plus the Executive Office, is being reorganized. Two divisions will be merged into others, leaving four divisions plus the reorganized Executive Office. EFA coordination will become a part of a division to Coordinate UN Priorities. (Programmatic aspects of EFA reside throughout the Sector. In essence, the primary work of the Sector is Education for All as defined in the Global Action Plan.) Other units going into this new division include the staff responsible for coordinating the Decades UNLD, ESD, and EducAids. These coordinating units have responsibility for external coordination with UN agencies and other organizations, as well as for internal planning for the sector s approach to these priority areas. Placing them together as separate Sections within one Division will facilitate both external communication and coordination and internal planning and will allow synergies to develop. As noted earlier, three sections at Headquarters are being abolished altogether, and the staff members from these Sections are being 11
redeployed, either to other Sections within Headquarters or newly created or vacant positions in the field. Several other posts are also being abolished for a total of 11 positions abolished at HQ. A few new positions are being recommended to improve operations at HQ, including a P5 professional Human Resources staff, as set forth earlier in this section of the report. This HR staff person will report to the Executive Office. Current HR General Service staff will report to the new P5. Another recommended new position is a Chief Financial Officer (CFO), who will be responsible for all financial management aspects of UNESCO s Education Sector s operations. The CFO will provide leadership to the Program Management Cycle and coordinate the budget, planning, accounting, and performance assessment of the Sector. A job description will be developed requiring a highly qualified individual with advanced degrees and experience in these functions. The addition of the CFO is an important step to professionalizing the Sector s financial accountability and approach to the program management cycle. The CFO will report to the existing position of the Deputy ADG of the Sector, who is also the Executive officer. 12
In the matrix management approach set forth in Section IV of this report, the Executive Office is seen as a cross cutting unit, interacting with all other units in the Sector. A primary objective of this reorganized function is to make all processes more efficient and effective. The reform workload analysis found that too much time of program staff is spent on process issues, yet processes are inefficient, ineffective, and slow. A more effective approach will free staff time to be spent on program but will result in a more accountability in the Sector. Other positions to be added at HQ include: A P3 staff person will be added to the Program Cycle Management unit, which will be headed by the Section Chief currently responsible for planning. This unit, which will report to the CFO will have responsibility for the budget recommendations in Section V, for improvement of Sector planning, and for developing a comprehensive performance assessment approach. A P5 position in the Country Planning and Field Support unit to work with implementation of the new UNESS process and the UNESS country planning positions being created in each region. This position will require a person who has recent, extensive 13
experience in a senior Education planning position in a Regional Bureau. A total of four (4) new positions are being added at HQ compared to eleven (11) being abolished. Another position is being upgraded. (The D1 position from the Education Quality unit is being upgraded to a D2 for Educational Programs as per earlier agreement between the ADG and the DG.) Currently the ED Sector ADG has seven (7) direct reports from HQ, eight (8) from Institutes, and four (4) from Regional Bureaux for a total of nineteen (19) D level positions reporting directly to him. Management literature is in near unanimous agreement that an individual should ideally have no more than five (5) direct reports. While the complexity of the Sector makes it impossible to achieve the ideal, the proposed organizational structure will result in two (2) direct reports from Headquarters, four (4) from Institutes and five (5) from Regional Bureaux, including Bucharest, for a total of eleven (11) total reports, for a reduction of over 40%, a much more manageable number. 14
No individual will be let go as a part of the reorganization. All in abolished jobs will be offered a specific position at their same salary level. No promotions are being given as a part of this reorganization. It is possible that there are some positions that may eventually need to be upgraded, given new responsibilities under the reorganization. The next phase of reform will include a review of position descriptions and rewriting as needed. At that time desk audits may be done, if warranted, to determine if there should be upgrades. The structural reorganization of the HQ Divisions will result a number of staffing changes within HQ. A number of individuals will move to new units with the same or similar responsibilities, while some will be given new or different responsibilities. Such changes are needed to fulfill the Sector s priorities and Strategic Direction. The next phase of reform will take a division by division approach, working with the Director and staff of each division in reorienting programs and projects to meet objectives and in organizing the Division for effective delivery of services. 15
C. Institute Staffing Recommendations Better integration of the work of the UNESCO Education Institutes with the work of the rest of the Sector is an important element of reform. Joint planning of Institutes with Headquarters divisions with responsibilities in the same or similar areas will be undertaken to foster synergy and concerted effort, as well as to avoid wasteful duplication. The Institute Directors now sit on the ADG s leadership team and they have played a constructive role in the reform process. As the reform process continues, the role of Institutes in furthering the priority goals of the Sector will be explored. While initial steps have been taken to review staffing, additional analysis will also be undertaken. At this time, the only staff change recommended for the Institutes, is the creation of a P 5 position in Literacy at UIE. Continuing review of the role and needs of Institutes may result in additional recommendations for funding in the 34C5. 16
D. Professional Development The need for Professional Development of Sector staff resounded during the reform workload and staffing analyses. Resolving issues of deprofessionalization must be addressed immediately. The Sector proposes that a professional Development Account be established from which the Sector will support professional development activites throughout the sector. These activities will be directly linked to improving Sector capacity to achieve its Strategic Objectives. Development of a full program of Staff Development for both professional and general services staff is planned in the next phases of the Sector s reform process. Development of this function to build professional capacity within the Sector will be the responsibility of the new Human Resources P5. It is important for the Sector to begin immediately to become a learning organization. As a beginning point for staff development, the Sector s International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) will develop and deliver short courses in Educational planning for Sector personnel to be offered in each of the Regions. Typically they will be organized to coincide with a Regional event (e.g., annual Regional meeting) to limit 17
travel costs. Other courses will be developed over time to be delivered by IIEP or possibly other Institutes. Courses will also be offered in Paris. The Sector will budget training funds to cover the costs of these seminars/short courses. IIEP will also open to Sector personnel the more complete course of study that it provides annually in Paris for country level personnel. The Sector will provide a limited number of scholarships for attendance. The purpose is to provide internal opportunities for learning and continuing education that are currently offered only to the constituency base. The courses offered by IIEP will serve as a model for Sector Professional Development to be offered by its own Institutes. As a part of its development of a more full scale offering of training opportunities, the Sector will utilize internal resources to the degree available, negotiating the price to be paid for these services with the Institutes. The Sector will also design/develop a Professional Development structure and infrastructure admissions criteria and certification process. 18
An abbreviated Professional Development needs assessment will be conducted to define and determine initial prioritized curriculum and content requirements. 19