The International Client Service Week (ICSW) is celebrated in the first week of October and this year, at the Regional Service Centre Entebbe (RSCE), we will observe the week between the 5^th and 8^th of October. The week focuses on the client and celebrates the importance of client service and of the people who serve and support the client daily.

The Regional Service Centre Entebbe serves 20 UN Missions in Africa and is the largest service centre under the UN Secretariat carrying out over 700,000 transactions a year including travel requests, telephone bills, payroll, claims and grants for close to 18,000 personnel.

For clients to be served better and to help them carry out their missions in the region, especially during this time where staff were working from home, the management decided to equip RSCE staff with the tools and internet data to enable business continuity.

The clients need quality service based on reliability, assurance, empathy and responsiveness and this fueled the commitment to keep the staff connected so they could deliver service to the client. It is for this that RSCE celebrates the International Client Service Week under the theme Committed and Connected to Serve.

This year’s celebration is a bit different as most of us are working from home and so the celebrations will be mostly virtual. The week will be full of fun activities that celebrate the client, colleagues and service.

The ICSW will start off with a video message from the Director a.i. RSCE, Paulin Djomo to all staff. He shall then distribute virtual badges via email to all staff to showcase the theme of this year’s celebration.

Also on this day, staff will nominate the service line they feel delivers best on the UN values of Integrity, Professionalism and Respect for Diversity and which of the teams/service lines demonstrated the following while serving clients in the past 12 months. The nominations shall be done using a Microsoft Team form and each staff will be allowed only one nomination.

Day two, which is Connected Day, staff will participate in an activity dubbed Pass the Baton. This activity is designed to showcase the connectivity and commitment of the staff. In this activity, Service Delivery Managers (SDM) will pass on a specific verbal message to their Service Line Managers (SLM) and these messages will be passed down to the staff. Each message shall be passed on from staff to staff on an individual basis. The SLM will pass on the message to one staff member via phone call who will be tasked to pass it on to the next staff and onwards till the last person on the list. That staff will then report back to the SLM with the message they received.

Just like with “Chinese Whispers”, the SLM will then report to the SDM with the exact message they received back from the staff and then the accuracy will be compared with the original message.

On the third day of the week, Appreciation Day, virtual thank you cards will be distributed by the leadership down to their reports. These are cards that appreciate the staff for their exemplary service even during the last 6 months of working from home, ensuring that excellent service to the clients is maintained. The staff have demonstrated commitment, hence the theme “committed and Connected to serve”.

Staff will also have the opportunity to send virtual thank you cards to their supervisors and to other staff they feel have done a great job in supporting them in delivering their service and that have delivered beyond self. Cards will also be sent to other staff in the missions that have shown resilience and commitment during this time.

The week will climax with a virtual townhall meeting on the afternoon of the 8^th October 2020.

During the townhall, the winning team from the poll will be announced. There will also be a presentation of staff voices with various multilingual messages on teamwork, testimonials from the missions on RSCE service as well as creative presentations from some staff.

After the townhall, RSCE Welfare team will host a virtual happy hour session packed with entertainment.