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HELP Forum
Humanitarian Logisticians Job Description Workshop
HELP maintains its reputation for delivering practical ideas that contribute to the professionalism and professional status of humanitarian logisticians. Pete Glasper and Michel Bronsema shared the work they have done researching the contents and formats of humanitarian job descriptions. They also demonstrated that the content of job descriptions, titles for jobs, and the relative importance of job functions vary hugely, even within the same agency. The research indicated that purchasing and procurement is the most common responsibility of a humanitarian logistician – perhaps demonstrating the growing importance of local sourcing to reduce costs, build the local economy and contribute to capacity building. Responsibilities for Security and Communications is also a common function of humanitarian logisticians, especially in medium and smaller agencies, though we might not consider them core supply chain skills.
The Humanitarian Logisticians Job Description Workshop reviewed 56 job descriptions in English and French from small, medium and large agencies, operating across the world. Job descriptions were submitted by HELP members and extracted from humanitarian job boards. All were for jobs opened in the last 12 months.
The workshop was attended by an excellent range of logisticians from the commercial, academic, and military sectors. Half the attendees were humanitarian logisticians who worked in agencies ranging in size from the United Nations family to smaller NGOs. They produced a framework which can easily incorporate ideas from any additional job descriptions and research.
The next stage is completing each generic functional specification and compiling those into a draft humanitarian job description for peer review. After their feedback we will publish Version 1.0 of the HELP Humanitarian Logisticians Job Description.
We are confident that the HELP Humanitarian Logisticians Job Description will be well received by our community and a template used by a number of organisations. It has also helped us identify training gaps which HELP can fill.
If you would like to learn more about this project, contribute to the peer review or receive a copy of the HELP Humanitarian Logisticians Job Description please contact HELP.
