United Nations modernizing its HR program

International body wants to ensure it recruits — and retains — top talent

The United Nations is working to modernize its human resources management in an effort to address recruiting and retention problems and help the organization fulfill its mandate.

Louise Fréchette, the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, said they are working hard to modernize HR, build a results-oriented culture and promote managerial excellence.

Arguing that the UN needs a pay-and-benefits system that supports these objectives, Fréchette told the General Assembly’s administrative and budgetary committee that a competitive package of conditions of service is a prerequisite to success.

She hailed the proposals to reform the system as, “innovative and forward-looking” and said the effort should facilitate mobility, strengthen leadership, encourage high performance and address problems involving recruitment and retention. Senior UN officials, she said, would work to implement the recommendations.

“The Secretary-General’s new ‘agenda for further change’ stresses that the goals set out in the millennium declaration can be achieved only if the United Nations has a world-class staff equal to the challenges of our times,” she told the committee, referring to a set of anti-poverty targets adopted by world leaders at the UN in 2000.

She appealed to the delegates — who set the UN’s budget and staffing structures — for their support “in making the organizations of the [UN] system more effective instruments for peace and development.”

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