Title: Director, Emergency Management (ON)

Employee Working Location: Remote / Virtual (Ontario)

Employment status: Permanent- Full Time

Salary band: $84,482 - $107,654/year

The Canadian Red Cross (CRC) – one of the most inspirational not-for-profit organizations on this planet and an awardee on the Forbes list of Canada’s Best Employers 2022 - is seeking aa Director to join the Emergency Management team.

We are guided by our Fundamental Principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity, and universality. We help people and communities in Canada and around the world in times of need and support them in strengthening their resilience.

Starting with the hiring process, we are committed to having an accessible, diverse, inclusive, and barrier-free work environment where everyone can reach their full potential. We encourage all qualified persons who share our values and want to contribute to fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace to apply.

The incumbent will work be reporting to the Senior Director, Emergency Management (ON), the Director has a thorough understanding of roles and the CRC emergency response and recovery frameworks and the Director provides leadership and oversight of EM Response Operations in Ontario. The Director is responsible and accountable for the leadership, coordination and implementation of all activities related to Emergency Management Operations including establishing and managing key internal and external relationships.

In this role you will:

• Provide operational leadership and oversight of Emergency Management response and recovery Operations
• Provide leadership in coordinating EM readiness and planning initiatives within the province
• Initiate and support the development of agreements with provincial authorities, municipalities and key external stakeholders.
• In coordination with CRC EMCI Leadership, is accountable for the geographies’ readiness to respond to level 1, level 2 and level 3 events, including sufficient personnel, systems and stocks. Accountable for geographic capacity to respond to regular, recurrent and episodic events; develops and manages a comprehensive workforce plan as part of a CRC wide capacity strategy.
• Enables EM Coordinators in volunteer engagement focused on response readiness, in line with provincial planning.
• Directly supervises a management team for Emergency Management Ontario (EMO) First Nations Evacuation planning and response.
• Provides second level supervision and coaching to EM team as required;
• Provides leadership in the development of work plans and career development plans for response staff and volunteers in the geography;
• Program Quality and Financial Management

#1. Readiness for L1-L3 EM Response Operations

• Provides leadership in the development of the CRC’s provincial capacity to respond to emergencies in all levels of severity;
• Provides leadership to the implementation of capacity building initiatives, dedicated to emergency response and recovery operations;
• Ensures the continuous advancement towards a fully scalable operational model, including tools/systems, workforce requirements to ensure effective, consistent and relevant service delivery;
• Oversees the implementation of the Society’s domestic EM foundations and Concept of Operations and related articulations;
• Contributes to the development of Emergency Management Information System, and responsible for its implementation in response operations;
• Ensures the development of surge systems and workforce capacity for emergencies in all levels of severity;
• Provides leadership, subject matter expertise, technical support, quality control, monitoring and evaluation to small and medium scale emergency response operations.
• Directly supervise the Senior Manager, EM, Readiness, and other project staff as assigned. Provides second level supervision and coaching to EM Coordinators and team members as required;
• Supports the development, integration and management of the Safety and Well Being/Mental Health Psychosocial Supports plan as it relates to staff, volunteers, provincial, municipal, and Indigenous relations, in conjunction with the province’s MHPSS Specialist, Sr. Director, Health.

#2. Leadership, Alignment and Accountability of L1-L3 Response Operations

• Provides leadership as PDCT Lead in times of large-scale operations.
• Collaborates with Senior Director, EM and Ontario Senior Management Team to ensure responses are implemented with recovery standards and planning in mind;
• Collaborates with EMCI Leadership during L3+ events and ensures alignment of National and Provincial response objective and tactics, as required;
• Ensures emergency response operations are executed in accordance with established standards;
• Ensures debrief, reviews and implementation of improvement action items are managed post response;
• Contributes to the CRC’s strategic positioning with government and external stakeholders, and actively creates and pursues opportunities for development in those areas;
• Ensures regular monitoring of effective use of resources, demonstrated results, and budget efficiency in relation to program objectives;
• Acts as a facilitator to ensure linkages between response operations teams and readiness/stakeholder teams at the provincial, regional and local levels.
• Facilitates engagement of subject matter experts into response operations, such as CRC’s Indigenous Peoples team, MHPSS, and others as appropriate.
• Ensure priority cross-cutting issues are mainstreamed into responses, such as protection of vulnerable groups, gender, environment, disaster risk reduction, and ensuring that projects are in line with the humanitarian principles;
• Directly supervise the Senior Manager, EM, Relief and Recovery, and other project staff as assigned. Provides second level supervision and coaching to EM Coordinators and team members as required;

#3. Lead CRC's engagement with Emergency Management Ontario (EMO) response operations and planning

• Ensures each function related to the PDCT has response plans to address First Nations evacuations and other large-scale events where CRC engages with EMO to lead and support;
• Ensures CRC’s understanding, and alignment with, provincial, federal and first nations emergency plans, including JEMS.
• In collaboration the Ontario IP Team, MHPSS and other internal stakeholders, defines the framework and surge mechanisms to ensure quality, comprehensive supports within CRC operations, with a focus on Northern First Nation's evacuations and other Provincial operations.
• Leads the coordination of planning activities in partnership with EMO, assigning CRC personnel and resources as required and within budgetary parameters;

#4. External Relations:

• In coordination with the Senior Director, EM, develops and maintains key strategic and operational relationships for response activation (Provincial Emergency Management Organization, Disaster Psychosocial agencies, Ministry of Health, First Nations, other provincial and territorial government agencies, Public Safety Canada, ISC and other organizations and agencies as required);
• In coordination with the Senior Director, EM, implements a strategic plan for signing Level 1 & 2 agreements, including identification of key municipal and First Nation communities;
• Oversees the implementation of municipal agreements and ensures personnel and material capacity to deliver on commitments and report back;
• Acts as a public spokesperson for the Emergency Management programs as required;
• Represents or ensures representation of CRC on strategic disaster-related committees and working groups as identified;
• Ensures timely and appropriate reporting for internal and external agreements, program and organizational priorities and concepts.

We are looking for:

• The minimum qualifications for this job are a university degree or diploma in disaster or emergency management and 7 years of disaster/emergency response experience including 5 years at a leadership level, or an equivalent combination of education and experience. Graduate Degree is considered an asset.
• Minimum 1-year experience with the Red Cross and 1 relief or recovery operation
• Strong understanding of disaster preparation and mitigation, response, and other humanitarian issues;
• Strong understanding of current Emergency Management systems, practices, and protocols;
• Knowledge or experience in the not-for-profit sector at a management level is desired.
• Commitment to the Fundamental Principles
• Strong understanding of current Emergency Management systems, practices, protocol;
• Language – must be able to read, write and deliver services as appropriate to the operation in English, French is a strong asset. Additional languages considered an asset;
• Leadership and Supervision –ability to manage change, motivate team members, have strong decision making and manage effective teams.
• Demonstrated ability in prioritization of responsibilities; able to give clear instructions and delegate, make informed decisions, ability to problem solve, provide coaching and feedback to staff & volunteers, support a team environment;
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office applications (Word, Outlook, Excel, Power Point) is required;
• Project Management Skills –developing project charters, planning, scheduling, supply management, risk assessment, budgeting, change manager, project control;
• Conflict Resolution Skills –active listening, mediations/negotiation, developing solutions & options with a win/win approach, appropriate assertiveness toward problems, managing emotions;
• Budgeting Skills –forecast, build budgets, monitor, analyze variances;
• Communication Skills –media interviews, clear& concise communication, confident, ability to influence others;
• Coordination Skills –Champion collaborative opportunities, flow of information, strategic thinker, facilitation/mediation, meshing work plans/prioritizing;
• A proven track record of working with diverse populations, and multicultural and Indigenous settings.
• Demonstrated strength in strategic perspective and ability to think and act at the organization-wide level
• Successful experience in all aspects of leadership agility and strength in facilitating opportunities across the organization
• Ability to understands and facilitate organizational navigation using formal and informal knowledge associated with CRC’s structure, business plans, work environment, programs as well as culture and climate
• Proven experience in building organizational capability and facilitating growth of the talent pool
• Strong ability to impact through engagement and influence, strength in encouraging others to act
• Demonstrated ability to foster teamwork and cooperation. Successful experience of collaboration to make things better and establishing partnership building opportunities externally
• Ability to focus on stakeholder accountability and align systems to deliver service excellence
• Successful experience in leading operations and making decisions despite ambiguity

Working Conditions:

• The majority of the work is performed in an environment which is mostly clean and comfortable.
• Potential for responding to disaster areas, as well as difficult and unstable conditions (environmental, physical, social, etc.) and uncomfortable conditions (noise, odors, smoke, humidity, vulnerable beneficiaries). These stressful rapidly changing environments with limited information to make decisions have the potential to affect the physical and psychological state of the responders on site.
• If working in a response site, health and safety considerations will be outlined prior to the assignment.
• Ability to respond during non-traditional hours (i.e. late nights or weekends) and long hours of work in a demanding context.
• Overnight travel within the Province and Canada is required;
• Ability to be on-call when scheduled, as required
• Eligibility to work in Canada: At this time, we welcome applications from candidates eligible to work in Canada. If you are not a citizen or permanent resident of Canada, we encourage you to carefully review your visa to find out whether you are eligible to work in the job you are considering applying for. Refer to our FAQ for more information.
• If you are selected for this role, you will be required to complete a successful pre-employment screening process which includes a satisfactory Enhanced Police Information Check (E-PIC).
• At this time, the CRC has temporarily suspended our Covid-19 vaccination policy and does not require, but continues to strongly encourage full vaccination of all our personnel.

Qualified applicants are encouraged to apply as soon as possible - those who apply after the selection process has started may be held for a second review if needed OR reviewed for alternative roles. We appreciate the time and effort it takes to apply and thank you in advance.

If you require accommodation measures during any phase of the hiring process, please notify us as soon as possible. All information received in relation to accommodation requests will be kept confidential