Impact and Learning Lead

Impact and Learning Lead
£50,000 – £56,000 per annum
Permanent

Closing date: 12th November 2023

Save the Children UK has an exciting opportunity to join us as our Impact and Learning Lead for our Business Programmes Hub in our Global Programmes Division to provide technical impact, research and learning leadership, and strategic support to our partnerships with GSK and Sanofi and other business partnerships, as well as developing and operationalising our impact and learning strategy for Business Partnerships.

About Us

Save the Children UK (SCUK) believes every child deserves a future. In the UK and around the world, we work every day to give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. When crisis strikes, and children are most vulnerable, we are always among the first to respond and the last to leave. We ensure children’s unique needs are met and their voices are heard. We deliver lasting results for millions of children, including those hardest to reach.

Background

This post sits in the Business Programmes Hub at Save the Children UK. The Hub is responsible for setting and operationalising our strategy for engaging in innovative partnerships with the private sector which leverage the unique capabilities and assets within both Save the Children and our private sector partners to achieve greater impact for children. The Impact and Learning Team supports impactful programme design, robust impact measurement and the generation of cutting-edge research to inform current and future private sector programmes/partnerships.

We work closely across department and division teams within Save the Children UK and Country Offices, and actively collaborate with the wider Save the Children movement through Save the Children International. We also contribute to wider debates and developments on NGO-business partnerships to further learning across the sector.

About the role

As Impact and Learning Lead in the Hub, 60% of the role is focused on providing technical impact, research and learning leadership, and strategic support to the Save the Children’s partnerships with GSK (50%) and Sanofi (10%).

In 2023, Save the Children and GSK entered a new 5-year phase of their partnership which focuses on reaching zero-dose children with vaccinations. This includes programmes in Nigeria and Ethiopia, an Immunisation Incubator and an ambitious research agenda in partnership with LSHTM, University of Ilorin (Nigeria) and AHRI (Ethiopia). In 2023, Sanofi and Save the Children committed to working together until 2030 to increase access to health care for children around the world.

For both partnerships, the Impact and Learning Lead will be responsible for designing and driving robust monitoring, evaluation, real-time learning processes and reporting processes. For GSK you will also beresponsible for managing the research agenda and stakeholders.

The other 40% of the role is focused on organisational strategy, capacity building, and concept development. You will act as a thought leader by continuing to develop and operationalise our impact and learning strategy for Business Partnership, ensuring it is appropriately implemented across the organisation and that it is refined based on learnings from SCUK’s experience developing innovative business partnerships and ongoing developments in the sector. Strategic areas of focus include ESG, alternative financing mechanisms and innovation.

This will require you to socialise the strategy with teams across SCUK, identifying promising opportunities to partner with business to drive forward the organisation’s priorities. Looking forward, as learnings across partnerships are gathered, you will identify opportunities to share and disseminate these learnings and best practices in the field to help catalyse greater awareness on how to deliver effective NGO-business partnerships. You will support the development of new proposals and programmes, by playing a key role in developing these partnership opportunities into fully realised concepts. This includes ensuring programmes are designed for impact, able to robustly measure impact and evidence impact (social and business) and reflect MEAL best practise.

Finally, you will line manage MEAL colleagues and strength their capacity and that of other colleagues (Save the Children, UK and global) to design and measure the impact of our business partnerships through training, mentorship and creation of job aids.

In this role, your key accountabilities will be:

Thought leadership

• Support Hub and Save the Children to define and operational concepts such as ‘transformational’ and ‘value add’ partnerships and ESG in its strategy. Socialise these concepts with teams across departments and divisions within SCUK and the Save the Children movement.
• Identify promising opportunities to partner with business to drive forward these priorities, particularly around ESG and innovative financing models.
• Lead the development of business benefits measurements, including contribution towards ESG ratings.
• Work across SCUK departments and divisions, and wider Save the Children movement, to understand and connect what the Hub and others are doing in the space of business partnerships. Socialise and create buy in for key concepts and strategies.
• Effectively convey and translate complex technical research and evaluation concepts in an easy-to-understand way to a wide range of stakeholders.

Technical leadership for new and existing business partnership impact and learning, particularly during programme design/development stage

• During programme design stage, ensure programmes are designed for impact by facilitating in-person and online theory of change processes/workshops with multiple stakeholders, to identify outcomes at multiple levels and assumptions, and that draw on existing research and learning.
• During the programme design stage, support staff to identify an appropriate methodology for evaluating impact, embedding these in programme design and budget and ensuring impact measurements are aligned to partner’s needs.
• For new and existing partnerships, provide strategic leadership (within SCUK and Save movement) on the design of robust impact and learning frameworks that reflect the programme theory of change
• Ensure that implementation of these frameworks is harmonised and consistently applied across countries and programmes.
• Commission and manage independent evaluations as needed which assess the overall impact, value for money and/or added value of business partnerships.
• Lead the design and support the implementation of process evaluations for adaptive project management and prototyping processes in innovative programmes.
• Lead effective lesson learning and knowledge transfer workshops during the programme life-cycle, ensuring evidence emerging from our partnerships is being used to strengthen implementation and increase impact for children.

Ongoing technical leadership for (GSK and Sanofi specific) impact, learning and research.

• Work with programme managers and country teams to measure, document and clearly articulate impact to the partnership. This includes leading on regular KPI reporting and repackaging this information for different audiences.
• Develop new research, commission evaluations, and ensure that learning generated is effectively disseminated and integrate into the design of current and future programmes.
• Manage relationships with academic partners, ensuring effective stakeholder engagement and the quality of research outputs.
• Lead the design and implementation of effective global impact and learning systems for new GSK and Sanofi programmes

Line manage and build the capacity of colleagues to design and implement impact and learning best practice

• Responsible for line-managing 1-2 MEAL/Impact colleagues, supporting them in their work and nurturing their professional development.
• Identify and address capacity gaps within Hub and SCUK, by providing bespoke training and ongoing mentoring and support, and developing job aids.

About you

This role is ideal for a person with substantial expertise in research and evaluation within a development context, who is interested in leading global research studies, and in creating strategic impact and learning systems. You should be able to think outside the box, comfortable taking initiative and working flexibly. You must also be adept at navigating complex relationships across large global organisations and thrive working in a collaborative environment.

To be successful, it is important that you have:

• Experience working in or with business to develop innovative private-public partnerships, including shared value partnerships, strategic Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) partnerships, and/or multi-sector collaboratives (e.g., between business, foundations, institutional donors, and/or specialized funding institutions).
• A deep understanding of corporate societal engagement and business’ motivating factors to partner with NGOs, including an advanced understanding of shared value and CSR.
• Direct experience of designing and implementing research and programme evaluations as well as partnership impact frameworks, including strong analytical skills and a deep understanding and experience applying a range of quantitative and qualitative research and evaluation methods.
• Significant experience in designing and managing the implementation of monitoring and evaluation plans and tools in a complex NGO/Private sector type programmes specifically.
• Knowledge of the methodological challenges involved in producing and assuring the quality of data and application of innovative methods and approaches to meet internal and external client needs.
• Ability to assimilate complex data and technical research and evaluation reports synthesising key strategic insights in a way which is accessible and actionable for partners as well as SCUK and CO colleagues.
• Substantial practical experience in monitoring and evaluation capacity building and training and distance technical support.
• Strong proven ability to support and build capacity of staff and effectively lead teams.
• Excellent at facilitating workshops and bringing together a variety of expertise around a common problem.
• Excellent leadership and collaborative skills with a proven ability to work with colleagues to set a strategic vision, inspire others to support and deliver the vision and secure cross-team engagement for delivery.
• Outstanding influencing skills, with a proven ability to influence peers and senior colleagues through the building of cross-organisational relationships and mobilisation of support for key issues. Demonstration of an ability to influence beyond authority will be an asset.
• Master’s degree or higher in international development, health, business, or related field.

To learn more about the position, please review the Job Description in the attached Documents.

Please Note: This role can be based in the UK, Ethiopia, Nigeria or Kenya provided you have the right to work in your prefered location.

What we offer you:

Working for a charity provides one of the best benefits there is – a sense of purpose and reward for helping others. However, we understand the importance of giving back to our employees to ensure a happy and healthy working environment and work/life balance.

We focus on flexibility, inclusion, collaboration, health and wellbeing both in and outside of work.

We provide a wide range of benefits which will reward your hard work, motivate you, and inspire you to work to improve the lives of children every day. You can read more about our benefits here.

Please note:

To avoid disappointment, you are advised to submit your application as soon as possible as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a high volume of applications are received. This is to ensure that we can manage application levels whilst maintaining a positive candidate experience. Unfortunately once a vacancy has closed, we are unable to consider further applications.

Ways of Working:

Remote First – The majority of our roles can be performed remotely, however you may work from the office as often as you wish. Whilst you will be predominantly working from home, we may at times require you to come to your contracted office (up to 2-4 days per month or 6-8 days per quarter). Note: This will be agreed with your Line Manager and team. This is intended to be time spent on collaborating with colleagues and relationship building.

On-site – There are certain roles that cannot be performed remotely and so your role will be based in an office location and you may occasionally be able to work from home.

Flexible Working – We are happy to discuss flexible working options at interview**.**

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion:

Save the Children UK believes in a world that is fair, inclusive and equitable where all children have the opportunity to change their world. We apply this to our workforce and we are committed to developing and supporting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organisation where all employees have a sense of belonging and feel that they can be “Free to Be Me”. We are not looking for just one type of person – we want to recruit people who can add fresh perspectives, innovative ideas or challenge that disrupts the risk of group think.

We are especially interested in people whose childhood experiences – of life on a low income, of migration, of being in a racialised community, of the care system, of being LGBT+ or in an LGBT+ family or living with (or with someone with) a disability – help us to see things we might otherwise miss. Whatever your story is we want to hear it because we know that different voices, ideas, perspectives and knowledge, working together will enable us to better the lives of children around the world. This is the reason why we are all here.

To see our full statement please visit this link: https://jobs.savethechildren.org.uk/our-policies/diversity/