UNHCR Values in Action: Trust, Resilience and Innovation

Team Assessment Tool Consolidating Organisational Core Values

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is a global organization dedicated to providing life-saving assistance for people forced to flee conflict and persecution.
The UNHCR Sub-Office Hong Kong was established in 1979 and promotes the cause of persons of concern in HKSAR and focuses on three key areas of Protection, Comprehensive Solutions and Private Sector Partnerships.
UNHCR Hong Kong wanted to bring the team together and reflect on some organisation core values that are included in their code of conduct: trust, resilience and innovation. They wish to go through experiential learning to practice the behaviours they want to foster in the organization. The Team Assessment Tool allowed them to reflect on how the team worked around such values and to come up with an action plan to bring back into their daily operations.

OBJECTIVES

  • Reuniting Participants in a Meaningful Experience
  • Driving Team Spirit
  • Assimilating the Values of the UNHCR Code of Conduct

CHALLENGES

  • Understanding the Values of Trust, Resilience and Innovation
  • Incorporating the Values into the Team’s Dynamic
  • Taking Actionable Steps Towards Values Assimilation

SOLUTIONS

  • Using the Team Assessment Tool Post-Activity
  • Teams Working Together on Common Goals
  • Teams Evaluating Output Trust, Resilience and Innovation

RESULT

  • Participants Involved in the Code of Conduct Values
  • Involved Team into Rating Own Performance
  • Tangible Actions and Ideas Moving Forward
  • Relevance to Daily Work

The Team Building Experience

UNHCR completed our Chain Reaction experience, where teams were given blueprints to build a series of machines that had to connect together. Team members had to trust each other to complete their assigned machines.

As teams connected their machines, resilience was crucial in overcoming setbacks and making necessary adjustments. Innovation played a key role as teams experimented with machines and agreed on a final design. Following the completion of the Chain Reaction, teams engaged in a meaningful discussion on how the values of Trust, Resilience, and Innovation were utilized during the team building experience. This discussion encompassed successes, areas for gain, and applications in the working environment, including observations from the facilitator to reinforce the learning journey.

Integrating the Digital Tool

Following the discussion, teams log onto the specific Team Assessment Tool created for this experience. The competencies of Trust, Resilience and Innovation were there along with the addition of Motivation, Team Dynamics and Design Thinking, which all related to the Chain Reaction program and the UNHCR Code of Conduct. These competencies are rated and presented as a Radar Chart. This Rader Chart is a great visual representation to look at where the team is performing well and where there are areas for development.

Coming Up with An Actionable Plan

The Code of Conduct is critical to an organisation such as UNHCR, and participants have been used to incorporate it within their work. The objective was to reinforce it and introduce its new elements in a fun way. The team building activity chosen by UNHCR already referenced the values of Trust, resilience and innovation, but the Team Assessment Tool really helped the team to come up with actionable ways to incorporate such values into their operational work.

To do this, every team first voted on how well they work together in relations to the competences of trust, resilience and innovation. Then, they have been presented with a summary of the results. At this point, each team proposed 5 actions to increase their performance in each of the competence area and each person voted for the 5 actions that they deemed most relvant. Finally, a core few actions were chosen to be taken forward i the daily operation of UNHCR.

Bianca Lam
Although we had only half a day, the team building activity and Team Assessment Tool were so effective in highlighting the importance of resilience and innovation that its learning lingered with us long after.
Bianca Lam / PSP Officer, UNHCR Sub-Office Hong Kong

Share on: