The Ugandan Jobline

Job Title: Head of Finance and Administration

Organisation: PEAS (Promoting Equality in African Schools)

Duty Station:  Kampala, Uganda

Reports to: Country Director

About US:

PEAS (Promoting Equality in African Schools) is social enterprise with a mission to ‘expand access to sustainably delivered, quality secondary education across Africa’. PEAS establishes and operates affordable secondary schools in Uganda and Zambia in areas where access to quality secondary education is limited due to cost and geographical barriers. PEAS launched an ambitious strategy in 2021, aimed at expanding Access to Quality education, ensure schools are Sustainable and invest in systems strengthening. With over 30 secondary schools in Uganda educating over 13,500 students, 41 staff at the Country Office and 900 staff working in the network schools, PEAS intend to expand its geographical coverage and impact by recruiting in various positions:

Job Summary:  The Head of Finance & Administration role is more than just finances – it is about building robust and scalable systems and processes to deliver our ambitious strategy. As a member of the Country Strategic Team (CST) you will provide critical strategic leadership to ensure we are delivering our ambitious five-year strategy including the delivery of ambitious Access, Quality and Sustainability impact goals.

As Head of Finance & Administration, you will be leading on the delivery of operational excellence at all levels of the organization to support sustainability, strengthen practices, and improve ways of working in the school network and office. This includes the senior operational management for key areas of service delivery including Finance, Procurement, HR, IT and School Construction.

As an organization working to expand equitable access with a strong focus on girls’ and one whose DEI approach is prioritizing increasing gender parity in leadership roles, we strongly encourage applications from female candidates.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

Leadership and Management

• As a member of the Country Strategy Team, providing critical strategic leadership across the operations departments to ensure PEAS Uganda is supported to deliver its ambitious five-year strategy – including the delivery of ambitious Access, Quality and Sustainability impact goals
• Championing sustainability, value for money and operational excellence across the whole organisation, most notably by driving all operational components of PEAS ‘NextGen’ business transformation programme
• Senior operational management for key areas of service delivery including Finance, Procurement & Logistics, HR, IT and School Construction, advising on operational and financial planning including budgeting, cash flow management, resource investment priorities, and operational policy matters whilst maintaining continuous consultation with other country leadership.
• Responsible for effective line management of Operations Department, empowering them and developing them to be high performing in their roles.
• Represent the organisation externally, as necessary

Finance and Grant Management

• Working closely with the Country Finance Manager to unlock the full capability of the existing finance team, including but not limited to – Overseeing
• Improvements across financial management processes, policies and accounting practices, driving forward their implementation
• Annual country office and school audit processes; ensuring successful management of the audit in line with internal and external deadlines
• PEAS systems to ensure there are robust procurement, contract management and financial reporting systems and that financial data and cash flow supports operational requirements.
• Grant finance and operations reporting to ensure high quality stewardship of all donors and deadlines are met
• Leading on the annual planning and budgeting process across the organisation, working with the CD and department heads and monitoring progress.
• Developing and implementing innovative and entrepreneurial revenue generation strategies to ensure the sustainability

Procurement & Logistics Management

• Supervision of organisation wide logistical operations (procurement, supply chain, asset management, fleet management, fixed asset registers) complying with PEAS policies.

School Operations Support Working closely with the School Network team, School Finance team and other to unlock the full operational capability of the school leadership teams so that school income is sufficiently greater than school cost in order to achieve full sustainability of the school network, including but not limited to – Overseeing and supporting

• Capacity development of school leaders on all areas of school operations to drive improvements in school management and reduce organisational risk.
• Country and school level staff to provide timely, high quality financial information for each school within weeks of school terms finishing.
• Efforts to build a stronger culture of financial control within the school network, including implementation of internal audit recommendations and optimisation of school procurement practices.
• Taking key network-wide decisions to maximise school level access, quality and sustainability (e.g. determining the optimal school fee and teacher salary structures).
• Working closely with the school support teams (e.g. Education and School Finance) to ensure school staff support is aligned to the PEAS’ People and Culture Charter.

People and Culture Working closely with the People and Culture team and CST to improve and strengthen HR policies and processes to unlock the full potential of our people including but not limited to –Overseeing

• Improvements across people management processes and policies, driving forward their implementation
• Development and implementation of People and Culture DEI initiatives
• Implementation of PEAS Learning and Development approach across the organisation including the development of line managers so that they are empowered to support their teams to be highly motivated and high performing.
• Driving a high-performance culture whereby performance at organisational and individual level is continually reviewed throughout the annual cycle
• All key HR policies and processes are living documents that are clearly reflected in the day to day work of the organisation including but not limited to Safeguarding, Code of Conduct, People and Culture Charter.

Construction and ICT Management: Overseeing

• PEAS’ school construction efforts by managing the Construction team to deliver effective and efficient school construction and projects monitoring.
• Projects team culture that focuses on infrastructure Health & Safety and ensure effective maintenance of infrastructure at network level.
• PEAS Uganda’s Offices and school network IT infrastructure to maximise organisational effectiveness and efficiency.
• Responsible for the Construction team adhering to internal risk management and auditing guidance across the full contract management process.

Compliance and Risk Management: Overseeing

• Adherence to health, safety and security standards in all operations including the PEAS office and staff.
• PEAS’ compliance to Uganda employment law to mitigate the risk to PEAS.
• Ensuring that PEAS Uganda complies with all relevant statutory regulations and internal policies (notably but not limited to those related Safeguarding and Anti-Corruption).
• Managing PEAS’ risk management, coordinating the effort to identify organisational risks, maintaining a risk register and ensure all risks are effectively managed at the appropriate level.
• Managing the relationship with PEAS’ lawyers and ensure legal compliance for PEAS and all the schools.

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

• The applicant must hold a Business or Accounting degree and certification to relevant accounting bodies
• At least five years of management and leadership experience in an operational and financial capacity – including managing departments of professionals with high levels of technical expertise and managing through others to deliver organisational improvements.
• Experience in creating and improving systems, policies and processes organisation wide across finance, operations, and HR, together with overseeing operational adherence.
• Experience in utilising sound leadership and management skills to ensure key deliverables are achieved on an individual, departmental and organisational basis.
• Experience of mentoring and managing staff (including professional development, performance management, appraisals, addressing poor performance).
• Experience in budget setting, cash flow management and monthly management accounts reporting, together with overall management of financial systems and processes.
• Knowledge and experience of financial regulatory requirements including taxation, the financial year end process, the creation of statutory accounts and liaising with external auditors and other stakeholders to ensure regulatory requirements are met.

Personal attributes and skills

• A champion of PEAS values
• Ego-less – ready to be a great leader and a great doer
• A credible leader who cares and can successfully influence, motivate and get the best out of people both within and outside of a line management relationships
• A clear and concise communicator, drawing out and communicating salient points (verbally and in written form)
• Able to get things done by focusing on solutions as opposed to problems and able to see the big picture while demonstrating excellent attention to detail.
• Humble – reflective, recognising own areas of development and being proactive to learn
• Adaptable, approaching uncertainty with positivity and resilience
• Comfortable in managing a complex and varied work-load, with multiple competing deadlines
• Data driven – can engage, interpret and understand data, prioritising data to inform decisions
• Entrepreneurial – thinking beyond the normal ‘this is how we do things’ and challenging themselves and others to think creatively, take measured risks to tackle problems
• Collaborative not competitive – Working with diverse and large teams, fostering a positive working environment with local and international stakeholders
• Excellent IT skills (i.e. Word, Outlook, Excel, M-Teams, PowerPoint etc).

How to Apply:

All Suitable and qualified candidates should follow this link:  Click Here to fill the application form for the job.

All candidates that expressed interest in the Head of Operations are advised NOT to Apply.

PEAS is an equal opportunity employer that does not discriminate in its recruitment practices and, to build the strongest possible workforce, actively seeks a diverse applicant pool. PEAS is committed to the protection of children, and we do not employ people whose background is not suitable for working with children.

Deadline: 6^th June 2022 at 5:00pm

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