Consultancy on Business and Inequality - Through April 2022

Oxfam is a global organization working to end the injustice of poverty. We help people build better futures for themselves, hold the powerful accountable, and save lives in disasters.

Consultancy (Oct 2021 – April 2022): Assessing companies’ inequality impact

Background:  Oxfam is a global movement of people who are fighting inequality to end poverty and injustice. We are working across regions in about 70 countries, with thousands of partners, and allies, supporting communities to build better lives for themselves, grow resilience and protect lives and livelihoods also in times of crisis. Because we want lasting solutions, we fight the inequalities that keep people locked in poverty and injustice, we tackle not the symptoms but the systems, and we campaign for genuine, durable change.

Due to its significant power, Oxfam works to channel the influence of the private sector to pro-poor ends. Oxfam engages in corporate campaigning, innovative collaborations, and pro-poor private sector development. Analyzing and addressing the private sector’s role in driving inequality has become a growing focus of this work.

Consultancy Overview: This project aims to advance the development and application of a robust framework, methodology, and strategy to assess individual companies’ contributions to inequality to be used in Oxfam’s influencing. Over the past two years, Oxfam has developed a solid foundation for this work, upon this project will build.

This consultancy will support Oxfam in moving from framework development towards building a use case and operationalization. The overall goal is to further refine the draft framework and to develop a strategy on how this work will find public use.  For that to happen, the existing framework and methodology needs to be further refined and tested.

The consultancy will also require significant internal and external engagement in order to collect expert input and build momentum and support for this project and ensure its utility for Oxfam teams and allies. While this project will initially be focused on the US context, there is the possibility of a global application of this work.

Objectives (until March 2022)

• Finalize a methodology to assess individual companies’ inequality impact including a clear and logical structure, indicator definitions, specific benchmarks, scoring mechanism, and data sources
• Test methodology and collect data on a set of companies across sectors (depending on additional capacity)
• Develop a strategy for rolling out the methodology including potential targets, process and risks

Consultant profile

The ideal consultant will have the following profile:

• Candidate for a graduate degree in Economics, Business, Political Science, Law, or related fields.
• 5-7 years of experience in work relevant to this project
• Experience in assessing company performance on sustainability issues (e.g. ESG reporting, sustainability reports, benchmark development)
• Expertise in the key corporate sustainability issue relevant for this project, such as inequality, labor, tax, gender, corporate governance and supply chains.
• Ability to conduct corporate financial analysis
• Track record to successfully conduct large-scale research and consulting projects 

Time line

Depending on the availability of the consultant, this consultancy will start in October 2021 and last six months. 

Oxfam America is a Gender Just organization and an equal opportunity employer. We have a zero tolerance policy for any sexual harassment, exploitation, and/or abuse. We welcome all persons to apply and do not discriminate. We take measures to prevent discrimination against any employee or job applicant on the basis of race, color, gender, national origin, age, religion, creed, disability, veteran's status, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

We are an E-Verify employer.

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