​Vacancies

Programme Officer – World Habitat Awards

The World Habitat Awards is a world-leading housing competition. The Awards recognise and highlight innovative, outstanding and sometimes revolutionary housing ideas. Every year we receive submissions from extraordinary projects and programmes from all around the world. We invest in the best, so they can become even better, help their ideas be replicated elsewhere and help many more people who deserve safe and secure housing.  We have global ambitions and provide opportunities to network with inspirational organisations, projects and individuals across the world.

We are looking for a dynamic Programme Officer to support our World Habitat Awards programme. You will be part of a small and experienced team that runs the Awards competition, and a series of international programmes and events that arise out of it. You will support the World Habitat Awards team and external partners to identify and encourage the adoption of the best housing practices. We are looking for someone who enjoys a variety of work, has strong self-management skills, and who will enjoy the opportunity to work with a global network of partners. Due to the nature of our work, we require someone who is comfortable working virtually and is able to build strong working relationships on and offline.

In order to meet our ambition to grow the impact of the Awards, we recently successfully moved our assessment processes online using Salesforce.  We believe this is an important first step in enabling us to spend less time on the administration of the Awards and more time on developing its ongoing impact.  This post will play a key role in helping us to identify further opportunities to improve our systems and approaches. Comprehensive Salesforce training will be provided for successful candidates if required.

World Habitat values diversity and aims to foster a diverse and inclusive working environment. We welcome applications from a diverse range of candidates, so that our workforce can be a good reflection of the world we live in and communities we work with. We are flexible and family friendly. We offer a 34.5 hour working week, flexible working arrangements, a generous pension, life cover and a competitive salary. We encourage career development with an appraisal system and opportunities to develop your knowledge and skills.

We have eleven members of staff.  In response to COVID-19, all staff are currently working from home and we do not anticipate opening our new office until the beginning of 2021 at the earliest. As a result of the success of homeworking, we are currently looking at providing more flexible working – so all staff who are currently office based can have a balance of working in our office and homeworking. We also have two members of staff who are not based in our Leicester office, including the line manager for this post, the Lead for the World Habitat Awards, who is based in The Netherlands.

Due to the international nature of our work we are particularly interested in hearing from people who have a strong level of international housing experience and/or can work in English and one of our other two organisational languages (French or Spanish).

Principal Duties and Responsibilities:

• Support the co-ordination and delivery of the World Habitat Awards programme, including undertaking administrative tasks, research, organising and delivering events, publications and communications outputs, as well as monitoring.
• Provide support to the World Habitat Awards process (and related knowledge exchange activities) by managing an accurate recording system (currently held on Salesforce) and providing reports as required.
• Take an active role in the assessment and processing of World Habitat Awards applications. Be the first point of contact for general enquiries regarding Awards and provide support to applicants as required.
• Assist the Programme Lead with evaluation visits to the Awards finalists and our exchange and transfer programme. Assist in the promotion of the Awards by identifying appropriate case studies and material for the World Habitat website and publications, as well as writing copy.
• Develop and maintain relationships with a range of international stakeholders of varying seniority levels.

Please note that we will only be able to provide feedback to those candidates who are shortlisted for interview.

Deadline for applications: 14 October at 10am (BST).

Please return application form and equal opportunities form to Ms Joanne Kovach at recruitment@world-habitat.org.

Interviews will be held online on 28 October 2020.

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