Reporting Manager at Mercy Corps

Requisition Number: REPOR001865
Employment Type: Full-time, Country-level staff
Supervisory Responsibility: None at the moment
Reports Directly to: Program Performance and Quality Manager
Works Directly With: PaQ team, Program teams, Finance Department, Sub-Grant and Compliance Manager, Operations, Security.

Program / Department Summary

• Mercy Corps has been present in Nigeria since 2012, focusing its interventions on humanitarian assistance, economic development, and conflict mitigation. With the ongoing insurgency in Northeast Nigeria causing the displacement of millions of individuals, Mercy Corps started its humanitarian response in 2014 to address the rising humanitarian needs.
• As the crisis has persisted, Mercy Corps’ strategy has also expanded to address the root causes of the conflict and seek to build the long-term resilience of communities with integrated programs focusing on governance, the recovery of markets and livelihoods, social cohesion and social protection, youth empowerment, and local conflict management.
• With funding from institutional donors, foundations and private corporations, Mercy Corps operates along with the humanitarian-development-peace nexus across Nigeria with the ambition of further deepening linkages across the country portfolio and expand both in-depth and length its interventions to providedurable solutions in current programming areas and address the emerging needs in new areas.

General Position Summary

• The Reporting Manager is a position within Mercy Corps Nigeria’s Program and Quality (PaQ) team and supports the entire country team as the point person for communicating Mercy Corps’ impact and innovation to donors and other external parties.
• This includes working closely with program and project teams to support research and consolidation of information to feed into clear narratives, statistical evidence, and case studies.
• The Reporting Manager must develop and possess an understanding of compliance and reporting requirements for each donor and work with teams to ensure quality reporting.
• S/he is expected to have a strong operational understanding of all activities and strategies.

Essential Job Responsibilities
Reporting:

• Responsible for coordinating, tracking, and developing a high volume of donor reports - ensuring they are of high quality and submitted on schedule.
  • Establish systems for reporting management (trackers, timelines, communications, helping teams to build out their reporting systems, etc).
  • Provide Quality Assurance on reports by receiving and editing them, identifying issues, liaisingwith teams to fix them, strengthening the storytelling, among other tasks.
  • Liaise with HQ on reporting- managing comms, follow-ups, as needed in collaboration with Program PM/Director and PAQ Manager.
  • Liaise with the sub-grant focal point to ensure reporting standards are upheld by partners.
  • Ensure reports build program accountability to key initiatives of Mercy Corps Nigeria, such as gender integration and social inclusion, accountability to the affected population, amongst others.
• Lead on the production of internal reports, including situation reports, impact stories ensuring timely inputs from program, finance, and operations teams, and ensure review and signoff processes are thorough and adhered to.
• Lead on the production of required reports to government agencies.
• Strengthen the report writing capacity of the team, conduct training, one-on-one coaching where necessary.

Organizational Learning:

• As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient, and relevant to the communities they serve, we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.

Accountability to Program Participants:

• Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts towards accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries and international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging participants’ communities as equal partners in designing, monitoring, and evaluating our field projects.

Knowledge and Experience

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent in a related field.
• Graduate Degree preferred.
• Excellent English language communication skills, with a proven track record in communications in the humanitarian and/or development sectors.
• Strong writing and analytical skills, and ability to edit with a critical eye to details.
• Prior experience in copy editing and consolidating information into cohesive reports required.
• 2 - 3 years of experience related to humanitarian and/or developmental work, with specific contextual knowledge of Nigeria preferred.
• Ability to deliver to deadline under pressure.
• Ability and willingness to learn and follow donor reporting and compliance requirements.
• Experience working in a multi-cultural setting.
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to communicate clearly to diverse groups.
• Demonstrated flexibility and creativity in planning and problem-solving.
• Demonstrated ability to support in the development of proposals for new projects and programs from conception to submission.
• Excellent verbal and written communication, organizational and prioritization skills, and the ability to multi-task.
• Demonstrated attention to detail and ability to follow procedures, meet deadlines and work independently and cooperatively with team members.

Success Factors:

• The successful candidate will have phenomenal writing and interpersonal communication skills. They will have a demonstrated ability to lead and communicate effectively with team members of varied work styles and cultures, follow procedures, and meet deadlines with flexibility and creativity in planning and problem-solving.
• S/he will have a proven ability to learn quickly, multi-task, prioritize, take initiative, and be accountable for results, understand the larger picture while remaining focused on the details, problem-solving, work within a complex and sensitive setting and, follow laws and security protocols.
• The most successful Mercy Corps team members have a strong commitment to teamwork and accountability, thrive in evolving and changing environments and make effective written and verbal communication a priority in all situations.

Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions:

• The position will be based in Abuja, Nigeria but requires travel to other field locations.
• Considering the travel from/to different field locations, this position will require flexibility in terms of accommodation and logistics.
• Housing in the field will be in hotels or guesthouses where available. Security in the field locations requires additional vigilance and accessibility will be reassessed continuously.
• Access to good medical services in the field is limited. Phone communication, internet, electricity, and water are available but might be erratic. Given the nature of the role, working hours require flexibility, and working through weekends/evenings might be necessary.