Senior Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Adviser – Maternity cover At Concern Worldwide

Our vision, our mission and our work are all defined by one goal – ending extreme poverty, whatever it takes. We believe that no-one should have to live in fear that they won’t have a home to sleep in or enough food to feed their children. For over 50 years we have been working with the world’s poorest people to transform their lives.

Today we are a team of over 4,400 highly skilled and dedicated professionals from 50 countries who share an exceptional depth and diversity of experience. We want committed, values driven staff to join our support office team and are currently looking for a Senior Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Adviser to lead our MEL work.

The MEL team sits within the Strategy, Advocacy and Learning (SAL) department and works primarily to support Country Programmes. Central to the MEL team is their collaboration with technical advisors and programme teams across our core sector areas of Health, Nutrition, WASH, Education and Livelihoods as well as in our thematic approaches of Equality, Climate and Environment, Conflict Sensitivity, Disaster Risk Reduction and Protection.

Concern offers in-house management and leadership courses and tailored organisation-wide learning opportunities both in-person and online. We are committed to providing our staff with the skills needed to excel in their jobs. All employees are required to undertake training in equality, diversity and inclusion; the Code of Conduct; and safeguarding, along with any other training required for the role.

Our culture is values driven and friendly. A global engagement survey conducted in 2022, responded to by 3,577 of our staff, showed that 89% of our staff would happily recommend Concern as a great place to work and 94% are proud to tell people that they work for Concern.

Our office is located in Dublin 2 and we are currently working a hybrid model (50% remote working) and offer flexi time.

The job: Working as the Senior Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Adviser you will facilitate the improvement of programme quality and organisational learning by leading a team of advisers to support country teams. Key to this will be strengthening existing, and introducing new and innovative, approaches to results based management (including working on innovative technical solutions for this), adaptive programming, and programme evaluation.

You will manage seven Team Members working on Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning and Digital Data Gathering.

If you join us, this is what you will be doing:

1. Work closely with sectoral advisers in SAL, and the Emergency and International Programmes Directorates, to ensure that the highest standard of advice on programme planning, monitoring and evaluation is provided across all of Concern’s programme contexts.
2. Provide direct support and guidance to country teams in the production of contextual analyses and in programme design, with a specific focus on monitoring and evaluation, promoting results based and adaptive management. There is a substantial travel element to this role, and it is expected the Senior Adviser will spend up to 30% of their time in our countries of operations.
3. Provide overall management and guidance to the team working on Concern’s Digital Data Gathering system and promote the regular use of the data collected by managers and programme teams. This will include facilitating the adoption of new technological approaches within our work and finalising an organisation-wide review of the current system.
4. Maintain an overview of organisational performance and support the process of quality evaluations. Provide regular updates to the management teams in the SAL, IPD and Emergency Directorates on evaluation findings, progress and quality
5. Provide oversight and direction on Concern’s internal Programme Quality Guide online platform, including developing guidance papers and updating existing guidance (including those related to standard indicator lists and data collection tools) based on learning across different sectors in collaboration with MEL advisors
6. Strengthen the capacity building processes by leading on development of two MEL Courses (Fundamentals and Advanced) for all staff across the organisation.
7. Assist in the development and operationalisation of an organisational results framework to support the Organisational Strategic Plan and establishing strong monitoring and evaluation systems for flagship programmes, such as those funded by Irish Aid.
8. Representation of Concern at external meetings, including the Dóchas Results Working Group and the Alliance 2015 MEAL Working Group.
9. Demonstrating leadership on workplace equality, diversity and inclusion and role modelling a positive safeguarding ethos.

Skills you will bring:

• Specific experience in programme planning, monitoring and evaluation of development and humanitarian programmes and strong understanding of M&E principles and processes.
• At least 3 years’ experience working in developing countries, preferably in fragile and conflict affected contexts, in the area of planning, monitoring and evaluation.
• Excellent people management and interpersonal skills, with an ability to manage effectively cross-departmental and functional teams.
• Demonstrable experience in the nurturing of organisational learning in programmes.
• A commitment to the vision, mission and values of Concern Worldwide.
• Strong understanding of global poverty and development issues.
• A post-graduate qualification in a relevant discipline
• Proven communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Proven high quality analytical skills.

You will report to the head of Technical Assistance and work closely with SAL Technical Advisers, Regional Directors and Desk Officers in the International Programmes Directorate, staff in the Emergency Directorate, key overseas staff and the IT department.

The salary is from €66,156 to €75,607 (band 6) and this is a maternity leave cover (one year) contract.