STU/67th Council/16/019
11 October 2016

200 EX/5: Follow-up to decisions and resolutions adopted by the Executive Board
and the General Conference at their previous sessions

Part IV: Human Resources Issues

B. Human Resources Management Strategy

STU Addendum

The STU remains deeply concerned with the lack of human resources planning in the Organization, which is manifest in the fact that the 2011-2016 Human Resource Management strategy remained at the development stage already reported in 197 EX/5 Part V and that no tangible outcome has been published since.

The STU requests that an evaluation be made of the 2011-2016 strategy before engaging a new strategy.

Concerning the 2017-2022 strategy, the STU would like to receive more details on the “consultative process” mentioned in the establishment of the strategy. Ten days to provide comments to the next years’ human resources management strategy can hardly be considered as such.

The STU strongly believes that the greatest resource of UNESCO is a “skilled, motivated and dedicated workforce”. However, the STU can attest that the staff is demotivated and is the entity which has suffered the most from the financial crises and the “Reform”. In fact, the STU agrees that there is an urgent need to allocate funding for training programmes. Although training programmes have been financed by “Invest for Efficient Delivery”,it cannot replace a stable corporate training budget financed by the regular programme.

Moreover, efforts in “invest for efficiency” are addressing mainly managerial competencies and are not programme oriented, where much improvement in competencies and skills is also needed to better contribute to the achievement of the Agenda 2030 and its SDGs.

The STU further deplores that promises made during the redeployment exercise in 2014, according to which redeployed staff would be duly trained on their newly-assigned functions, have not been respected.

The strategy points to an alarming Gender Gap at the P5 level, while noting that the gap is smaller at the P4 level, whose occupants are not much less experienced than their P5 colleagues in terms of average years served in the organization.

The STU is alarmed at the lack of career development option for the GS staff with average time spent on the same post being 8.3 years in comparison with 6 years for P5 and 6.4 years organization wide.

The STU is deeply concerned that nearly half of the Organization’s workforce is made up of temporary staff (see STU’s comments in 200 EX/5 Part IV (A)).

The STU is deeply troubled by the fact that among the numerous and urgent needs in human resources management at UNESCO, the Administration’s yearly response was to launch the UNESCO Competency Framework. Just to mention a few, the STU would give priority to: halting arbitrary firing, recruitment, career development, updating job descriptions, regularizing long- term temporary staff, etc.

Furthermore, the recruitment procedures should be revised in order to ensure equity, fairness and transparency at every step of the recruitment process. HRM should have a sufficient number of dedicated and competent staff involved at all stages of recruitment (composition of the selection panels, etc.) to avoid biased procedures which lead systematically to staff demoralization/demotivation.

The STU questions how UNESCO is able to attract and retain the best candidates in its field of competences as overall employment conditions will considerably deteriorate for professional staff following the implementation of the ICSC Review.

Furthermore, STU is worried that a part of the decision by the last General Conference on the recruitment of vacant posts (“Staff members shall be given priority of consideration for vacant posts on the basis of equal competence”) will not be implemented, and that acquired staff rights will not be protected. Should external recruitment become the norm, this will perpetuate a high percentage of demotivated staff with no prospects for career development.

STU would like to recall that to this date no mobility mechanism whatsoever has been set up and that the majority of provisions of the October 2013 Mobility Policy have remained unapplied. Transfers at equal grade between field offices or from Headquarters to field offices and vice versa are left to the discretion of sectors and field directors, and are decided on a case-by- case basis with a completely opaque set of criteria.

Concerning enabling and engaging work environment, the STU would like to stress that UNESCO lacks a policy for disabilities and means to allow disabled colleagues to perform their work. Moreover, UNESCO lacks a policy on stress management and burnout prevention. As far as the Security plan at Headquarters is concerned, the STU regrets that it is still at development stage after ten months since the 13 November attacks in Paris.

The STU urges the Director-General to develop a real human resources management policyfor UNESCO for 2017-2022**** , with clear goals and mechanisms, in which all levels of hierarchy become accountable for their responsibilities in human resources management, including knowledge and skills development, career development planning and transparent mobility and recruitment processes.

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