UNICEF’s Journey on Organizational Culture By Geeta Narayan “A Culture Advisor? What in the world is that?” This was my first thought when I learned about a new position in UNICEF that was being created in response to the report by the Independent Task Force on Workplace Gender Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, Harassment and Abuse of Authority (ITF), which came out in June 2019. The ITF report, together with other reports commissioned by the Executive Director in 2018 and 2019 [i.e. Independent Panel Review of UNICEF’s Response to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse; Morgan Lewis Review of UNICEF’s Sexual Harassment Investigations] and staff-led reports such as UNICEF in the Mirror, marked an important moment in UNICEF’s history – a moment when we realized we had to change how we worked together. This was new ground for UNICEF, and it was not easy. Employees were not sure if speaking up and out was worth it – would things really change this time? Managers were uneasy about what the changes...
Written by and for the former staff of UNICEF