The International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a CGIAR Research Center is looking for a competent, self-motivated, and dynamic candidate to join as Administrative Support Officer.
The Administrative Support Officer provides a comprehensive range of administrative services and provides basic project management support to assigned Project Leaders, Research Group Leaders and Initiative Work Package Leads based in the Sri Lanka office. The Administrative Support Officer will interact with multiple levels and departments within IWMI and as required CGIAR-wide.
The Administrative Support Officer will provide assigned research staff with administrative and coordination support for projects, specifically assisting researchers in their delivery of work programs, coordinating events and activities effectively, ensuring delivery to target of key internal outputs, as well as coordinating travel and process associated purchase requisitions (PRs), purchasing orders (PO) and facilitate the procurement process. This role requires the incumbent to be proactive and able to provide intensive support to researchers. It necessitates a high level of communication skills, integrity, and experience of effectively navigating a complex, multicultural and multi-time-zone environment.
Duties AND Responsibilities:
- Deliver administrative services, meeting timeliness standards aligned with business requirements. Services include but are not limited to:
- Arranging travel according to IWMI policy including visas, accommodation, and preparing itineraries as well as claiming expenses.
- Arranging local transportation when required in conjunction with IWMI Transport unit, inclusive of creating TRs in the system
- Provide operational assistance and oversee logistical support for all events, meetings and conferences including but not limited to sending out invitations, receiving confirmations and preparing participant lists.
- Liaise with relevant administrative service units in obtaining the required services for events and other service requirements.
- Extend support in generating travel, visa and other logistics requests for research and other staff
- Facilitating procurement of goods and services, which includes raising accurate and complete goods receipts, purchase requisitions (PRs), purchase orders (POs), manage related documentation and ensuring data is available.
- Coordinating the initiation of partnership agreements and consultants, internship/fellowship contracts, including submission of invoicing and payments, clearing commitments etc. to ensure the process runs smoothly.
- Providing project support administration, inclusive of report downloads, expenditure list generation, processing operational expenditures and commitment clearance.
- Advise assigned researchers on guidelines, timelines- and procedures to ensure overall optimization of administrative and coordination support.
- Ensure researchers have necessary supplies and operational office equipment, which includes facilitating issuance of stationary and other related material as required.
- Assists in establishing, coordinating and running workshops and capacity building events, which includes preparing invitations, and certificates/documents and arranging logistics for participants and follow up
- Edit and format documents to be submitted to IWMI’s publications unit and external partners.
- Performs any other administrative and/or support duties, as required by the RGLs/PLs based in the Sri Lanka office within the remit of this function.
- Attend to all service and other requests, queries in a timely manner and bring such service requests to a closure in line with service delivery KPI’s set.
Requirements
MINIMUM EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE:
- Advanced computer literacy (Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint)
- Ability to edit and format large documents, charts and tables to publication quality is essential.
- At least 8 years’ relevant experience.
- Strong client orientation and service approach
KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES: - Fluent English, with excellent written and oral communications skills.
- Excellent communication, organizational and effective planning skills
- Demonstrated ability to prioritize and independently co-ordinate workload to comply with deadlines.
- Ability to work effectively with multiple stakeholders and prioritize requests in a fast-paced
- Able to anticipate needs/issues, drawing on a high degree of initiative and judgement in reliably executing or coordinating a range of tasks independently.
- Well-developed skills in personal organization, priority setting and problem solving
Benefits
What we are offering:
This is a nationally recruited position and only candidates who are eligible to work in Sri Lanka will be considered. IWMI offers a competitive salary and benefits package, inclusive of health insurance, life insurance, accidental death and dismemberment (AD&D) insurance, and long-term disability coverage. The duration of the contract will initially be for a period of three years.
HOW TO APPLY: We will be accepting applications through 24:00 (IST) March 9, 2023 (applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis). Receipt of all applications will be acknowledged, but only short-listed candidates will be contacted.
IWMI believes that diversity powers our innovation, contributes to our excellence, and is critical for our mission. We offer a multi-cultural, multi-color, multi-generational and multi-disciplinary working environment. We are consciously creating an inclusive organization that reflects our global character and our commitment to gender equity. We, therefore, encourage applicants from all cultures, races, ethnicities, religions, sexes, national or regional origins, ages, disability status, sexual orientations, and gender identities.
