STANDING ROOM ONLY
4 May 2007, Geneva. Yesterday HQ staff packed the Executive Board room to hear more on two key initiatives for the Organization: contract reform and the Global Management System.
The Deputy Director-General, Dr. Asamoa-Baah, chaired the meeting and set the tone by
encouraging all staff to raise their issues,
concerns and questions. “We’d also like to
acknowledge the constructive and helpful
discussion of these issues over the last few
weeks with the Staff Association,” said Namita
Pradhan, Assistant Director-General for
General Management.
“Contract reform goes beyond the benefits of
equal pay and benefits for equal work. It
means simplification, clarification, parity, and
adopting best practices. We want to be an
ideal hiring Organization. We are not there
yet, but this is what we are working towards.
Contract reform will raise questions, and generate
a good amount of work for us initially,
but in the end we will have made administering
contracts a lot more simple,” she stated.
Alejandro Henning, the Director of Human
Resources, provided an overview of the benefits
the new contracts would have for all
WHO staff, effective 1 July. “One clear advantage
for temporary staff is that the 11-
month contracts will no longer exist and temporary
staff can be hired for up to two years.”
Under the new contract system, benefits to
temporary staff would be brought more in
line with those of fixed-term staff (e.g. accrual of sick leave and within grade increases).
Other benefits, including advantages for
fixed-term staff who would be converted
to “continuing contracts” after five years of
service, were also explained.
The benefits to contract reform include various
options. Staff were encouraged to carefully
read the HR e-guide, which will be updated
shortly, to reflect the changes that take
effect on 1 July. During the meeting, staff
asked many specific questions, and Alejandro
Henning promised more cluster, department
and individual meetings to answer these.
The overview of the Global Management
System (GSM) also generated lots of discussion.
Scott Pendergast, project manager of the
GSM, pointed out that many of the systems
we currently use today will no longer be
used. “What we’re talking about is one global
system, one way of doing business, with
information that is available in all WHO offices.”
Practically, it means that no matter
where we are, we have access to the same
information to administer our health programmes,
including from our human resource
needs, to tracking every dollar spent.
A clear concern from WHO staff was the
timeline for implementing both the Global
Management System and the plan to reorganize
our services in what is called the
Global Service Centre. Pendergast explained
that the GSM team was tracking the project at
specific points, in order to be sure it is ready
for headquarters in January 2008, and rolledout
to regions over the following 18 months.
“We need to meet these criteria to go-live,
and if we don’t, we will reconsider the January
date. We do not plan to go live with an
unstable system. We are aware of the timelines
and believe it is possible to go live in
January.”
The GSM will clearly change the way we
work and all staff will undergo training –
from technical officers, to administrative staff,
and up through senior management. One
staff member made the point that senior managers
should lead by example, and attend
these trainings.
Acknowledging the effect the GSM and Service
Centre would have on staff, Namita Pradhan
stated that both she and the Director-General were committed to minimize the
impact this would have on staff.
“We hear you, we understand your concerns,
and we want to work with you even more,”
concluded Pradhan.
