Communications Specialist

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Job Description

Under the supervision of the Fund Director and in close collaboration with the LIFT teams, the Communications Specialist will revise and implement the LIFT Communication Strategy for donor relations, external, internal, and crisis communications.

This includes editorial responsibility for reports, newsletters, minutes, programmatic updates, social media posts, town halls, events, press releases, the LIFT website, and other channels, ensuring the highest quality in all written, graphic, and audio/visual communications content.

The incumbent under this role should liaise with senior management and the Fund Board, to proactively contribute to LIFT being well-positioned to deliver on its 2024-2028 POA, streamlined through Plans of Action and at any time aligning to UNOPS’ global communications strategy and standards.

The Communications Specialist will be supervising a small communications team, and ensure that the entire team works coherently to achieve goals within the agreed framework.

Lead the revision and implementation of the communications strategy and plan

Revise LIFT’s communications strategy aligned with the overall UNOPS Myanmar Communications Strategy, by considering the Fund Director and Fund Board inputs and expectations.

Oversee and manage day-to-day communications operations, ensuring that high-quality work is delivered in a timely manner to support core LIFT activities in the best possible way.
Create a tracking framework or method to ensure quality and timely delivery of the plan.
Monitor all communication channels, working with the LIFT teams and management, to facilitate effective reporting, proper templates, access to information, formatted impact accounts, and more.
Ensure that the communications framework supports the overall LIFT activities and goals, adapting when necessary.
Conduct regular communication assessments, to ensure mapping the Programme´s needs.
Create and track the communications budget, ensuring compliance with UNOPS rules and regulations.
Partner with the Fund Director and LIFT´s Leadership for proposal writing, including working on methodologies, creating templates, and continuously improving the process.
Take accurate notes from meetings and FB fora ensuring the incorporation of stakeholder comments to produce final records for adoption.

Team management:

Recruit and develop the most qualified and suitable talent for the team, according to the Communications Strategy.
Provide continuous feedback on team deliverables and performance.
Establish weekly checkpoints to track progress on the work plan and ensure covering sensitive/urgent/latest topics on the internal and external communications agenda.
Facilitate capacity-building sessions for the team on trending topics, methodologies, and processes.
Set up personal goals for communication staff, coaching them to perform to the best of their ability, and inspire and help them to develop skills as required by tasks.
Comply with UNOPS Performance Management processes, ensuring the quality of assessments, feedback, and deadlines completion.
Stakeholder management
Identify and develop strong relationships or partnerships with the Programme´s main stakeholders, to enhance strategic alliances and visibility.
Liaise with stakeholders such as the Fund Director, Fund Board, LIFT Senior Management Team, and relevant external stakeholders to ensure understanding and alignment of their needs to produce newsworthy deliverables.
In collaboration with the Fund Director, decide on a framework and process to communicate with Donors and stakeholders, effectively.
Participate in external events, ensuring to represent UNOPS following the highest standards of diplomacy and alignment with LIFT´s communications principles.
Lead on coordinating and formulating communications to the Fund Board, ensuring consistency and quality reporting and other products.
Innovation, knowledge management, and capacity building
Identify, capture, synthesize, and share lessons learned to develop knowledge and build stakeholders’ capacity.
Apply innovative approaches to support the implementation and delivery of effective and efficient initiatives.
Participate in capacity-building sessions to enhance the stakeholder´s capacity development.
Enhance a development & learning management culture within your team to ensure sustainable and scalable growth.
Lead capacity development of staff in general and manage the communications unit to drive a high-performing team that strives for quality and development of innovative communications products

Education/Experience/Language requirements:

Education:

A Master’s degree preferably in Communications, Public Relations, Social Sciences, Multimedia Management, or other similar field is required.
A first-level university degree (Bachelor’s), preferably in the above professional fields with 2 additional years of relevant experience, could be considered in lieu of the Master´s degree.

Experience:

Required experience

A minimum of 5 years of progressive experience in strategic communications work in a global organization is required.
Within those 5 years, a minimum of 3 years of experience in collaborating with senior management on all aspects of strategic or crisis communication, preferably including messaging and media training is required.
Experience leading a team is required.
Experience managing sensitive and complex communication in a corporate or diplomatic context is required.
Experience in advising on and overseeing the production of content for social media and other communications channels is required.
Experience in the usage of computers and office software packages (e.g. MS Office newer versions, Google Suite Applications) is required.

Language Requirements: