Review of the Terms and Conditions of Service of Support Staff of the Commonwealth Secretariat

Reference: COMSEC/SGO/POCWG/0296
Location: London, UK
Duration: A minimum of 10 Consultant Days
Closing Date: 29 Jul 2011

Background

The Commonwealth Secretariat is an intergovernmental organisation based in London. The Secretariat has an establishment of about 300 employees in three categories i.e. Diplomatic, Professional and Support. Diplomatic and Professional staff are internationally recruited from member countries and Support staff are locally recruited from the UK market.

As part of the Secretariat Talent Management Strategy, it is seeking to review its Terms and Conditions of Service for its Support Level Staff, taking into account international norms to ensure it retains good quality existing staff and attracts the high calibre of staff required to support the achievement of the mandates set out by its Member Governments.

Objective

To review the remuneration and terms and conditions of service of support level staff and to make recommendations that will enable the Secretariat to retain existing good quality staff and to attract high calibre applicants to jobs in those grades.

The review will:

Benchmark the job contents of support level jobs to identified organisations in both the private and public sector for comparator purposes in order to determine relativities.

Working with HR and Finance, this exercise will need to:

1. Take into consideration good practice in reward management of other similar international organisations based in London especially the Flemming Principle of the UN, which states that “the conditions of service for locally recruited staff…reflect the best prevailing conditions found locally for similar work ”;
2. Survey Reward Philosophies, Policies and Strategies driving the remuneration packages in the respective surveyed organisations and provide contextualised comparison with the Secretariat’s remuneration system at the support job level;
3. Survey the interlocking relativity between the support level remuneration and the lower level jobs in each of the surveyed organizations.
4. Provide statistical information on levels of pay and benefits in the surveyed organisations;
5. Provide recommendations on remuneration levels and terms and conditions of service informed by the market conditions on equivalent jobs;
6. Provide a comprehensive schedule of cost implications in order to provide the Assistant Secretary-General (Corporate Affairs) with sufficient details to enable Management to make effective decisions on implementation.

Requirements

The scope of the review is to include analytical market trends analysis from benchmarked roles.

The tender document must include:

1. Qualifications and experience of proposed consulting team;
2. Details of the proposed review process including roles, responsibilities and duration of work for consultant(s) including budget information;
3. Methodology – the means and tools by which the review will be conducted; and
4. Details on recent similar work and references.

Management of the Review

The consultant will report to the Assistant Secretary-General (Corporate Affairs).

Deliverables

1. A full report including details of comparator organisations and their reward management philosophies, policies and strategies;
2. Detailed cost of implementation of any recommendations; and
3. Clear methodology on determination of recommendations which will feed into Pay Policy for staff at the support level and the overall Reward Strategy of the Secretariat.

Timescale

• Closing date for submission of tender proposals: 29 July 2011
• Tender selection panel: 04 August 2011
• Commencement of consultancy: 15 August 2011
• Completion of consultancy: 26 August 2011
• Estimated number of consultant work days: A minimum of 10 days

Download the Terms of Reference