Communications Officer

LIFT is embarking on a new strategic period for 2024-2028. The LIFT 2024-2028 Strategy builds on the achievements of LIFT’s experience as well as recent adaptations and learning in the face of a changing and dynamic context. The new Strategy outlines an approach to tackle structural drivers of poverty and vulnerability, while also considering immediate interventions to secure and maintain Myanmar’s previous development gains. LIFT has proven itself as a key delivery partner across Myanmar’s changing contexts – ranging from post-Nargis recovery, a time of political transition, and relief support during COVID-19. LIFT is managed by the United Nations Office for Projects Services (UNOPS) and has received funding from 16 international donors. The current donors are the United Kingdom, the European Union, Switzerland, Australia, the United States of America, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and Denmark.

Under the supervision of the Communications Specialist and in close collaboration with the Communications Senior Officer and the LIFT teams, the Communications Officer will support in implementing the LIFT Communications Strategy for donor relations, external, internal, and crisis communications. 

The Communications Officer will contribute to running several editorial processes for reports, newsletters, minutes, programmatic updates, social media posts, townhalls, events, press releases, the LIFT website, and other channels, and must be dedicated to achieving the highest quality in all written graphics, and audio/visual communications content.

The person under this position will participate in field trips, take photos, record footage and audio, and conduct interviews with beneficiaries and implementing partners to demonstrate LIFT’s impact. Also, the incumbent must be able to understand the volatile country context and based on thorough monitoring advice on communication opportunities and challenges. The aim is to help the unit contribute to LIFT being well positioned to deliver on its strategy, streamlined through the Plan of Action and at any time aligning to UNOPS’ global communications strategy and standards. 

The Communications Officer will proactively contribute to the unit working in a coherent manner to achieve goals within the agreed framework.

Implement the communications strategy and plan:

• Support the creation of LIFT´s communication strategy by providing accurate, updated, and analyzed data as an insight for the strategy definition.
• Day-to-day communications execution, ensuring that high-quality work is delivered in a timely manner to support core LIFT activities in the best possible way.
• Follow the tracking framework to ensure quality and timely delivery of the plan.
• Constantly update the information about the different communication channels to facilitate effective reporting, proper templates, access to information, formatted impact accounts, and more.
• Support regular communication assessments, to ensure mapping of the Programme´s needs.
• Contribute to the communications budget tracking process, ensuring compliance with UNOPS rules and regulations.
• Analyze the local communication context, the target audiences/stakeholders, and available communication channels as well as unforeseen events that may impact operations and LIFT´s reputation.
• Support the delivery of high-level, strategic messages,  at meetings, reports, and newsletters, and when needed ad hoc.
• Content management and creation
• Create communication editorial content including talking points, FAQs, internal messages, fact sheets, news releases, website content, social media, and videos.
• Identify, select, extract, and summarize data in a structured fashion.
• Execute the process of capturing, recording, and transforming content into insightful/strategic information to communicate with LIFT’s main stakeholders.
• Conduct literature searches, and write literature summaries and manuscripts, requiring preliminary judgments after the supervisor outlines a conceptual approach.
• Prepare messaging for target audiences, choose effective communications channels, and refine messages to optimize impact.
• Partner with subject matter experts to develop comprehensive reports for internal leadership, employees, and external stakeholders.
• Manage multiple deliverables simultaneously and anticipate short-, medium-, and long-term communication needs.
• Stakeholder management
• Partner with the Communications Specialist to develop strong relationships/partnerships with the Programme´s main stakeholders, to enhance strategic alliances and visibility.
• Follow the process to communicate with donors and stakeholders, effectively.
• Contribute to the organization of external events, ensuring to represent UNOPS following the highest standards of diplomacy and alignment with LIFT´s communications principles.
• Work with subject matter experts to develop comprehensive reports for internal leadership, employees, and external stakeholders.
• Innovation, knowledge management, and capacity building
• Identify, capture, synthesize, and share lessons learned to develop knowledge and build stakeholders’ capacity.
• Apply innovative approaches to support the implementation and delivery of effective and efficient initiatives.
• Contribute to the development of a learning management culture within the communications team to ensure sustainable and scalable growth.

 Education/Experience/Language requirements

Education:

• A Master’s degree preferably in Communications, Journalism, Public Relations, Social Sciences, Multimedia Management, or other similar field is required.
• A first-level university degree (Bachelor’s), preferably in the above professional fields with 2 additional years of relevant experience, could be considered in lieu of the Master´s degree.

Experience:

• A minimum of 1 year of progressive experience in strategic communications, including content creation, media relations, and digital communications literacy, working for a global organization is required.
• Demonstrated experience in editing, writing, and storytelling skills in English and the local required language, to address various audiences, are required.
• Experience in Social Media tracking tools, Content Management System, and digital content creation is required.
• Experience with sensitive and complex communication, issues management, and drafting clear messages for high-level stakeholders is an asset.
• Experience in collaborating with senior management on all aspects of strategic and crisis communication, including messaging and media training is an advantage.
• Experience managing sensitive and complex communication in a corporate or diplomatic context is highly desirable.
• Experience in training or mentoring programme colleagues and partners in collecting data and impact stories for internal reports and updates as well as external use is an advantage.
• Experience working with the UN or international organizations is highly desirable.
• Experience in the usage of computers and office software packages (e.g. MS Office newer versions, Google Suite Applications) is required.

Language:

• Fluency in written and spoken English is required.
• Proficiency in  Burmese is required.

Source: https://jobs.unops.org/Pages/ViewVacancy/VADetails.aspx?id=29472#1