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Strategic Programme Manager

Employer
Citizens Advice
Location
Flexible Location
Salary
£65,000 - £70,000 per annum
Closing date
23 Jul 2018

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Citizens Advice provides free, independent and impartial advice and information to help people resolve their legal, money and other problems. In the past year we have helped over 2.5 million people solve over 6.2 million problems. Our national network delivers services from over 3,000 locations in England and Wales. In 2015 we won Charity Times Charity of the Year for our work. Now we want to do even more.

Strategic Programme Manager
 £65,000 - £70,000 per annum
Flexible
Full time
Permanent
Job Ref: 18\129

Overview

Do you want to work for an organisation that really makes a difference, every single day, to people from all walks of life? The people that turn to Citizens Advice need help overcoming an obstacle in their lives – from debt to evictions to trouble at work – and you can be key to them getting the support they need in the quickest, easiest, and most effective way.

Last year, Citizens Advice helped 2.7 million people face-to-face, by phone, email and webchat, and we received 43 million visits to our digital advice content.

At national Citizens Advice, we provide advice direct to clients through our digital content, and we support a network of 300 local Citizens Advice across England and Wales - each an independent charity. Our services are provided by 23,000 trained volunteers and 7,000 paid staff.

Our advice changes lives, and it generates significant social value. In 2016/17, our advice saved the public purse £426 million, generated £2.8 billion in financial outcomes for clients, and £2.6 billion in wider economic and social benefits such as wellbeing, participation and productivity. You can read more about our impact here.

We are looking for people to help us improve and transform our organisation. We can offer you the opportunity to make a genuine impact and create lasting change within an organisation that generates significant social value.

What will you be doing?

Our support covers a wide range of functions and includes operational and governance support, advice content, IT infrastructure, client management systems, quality assurance, and training. This area of our business has an annual budget of over £10 million and more than 160 FTE across multiple teams.

You’ll lead a high-profile, strategically important programme of change that will deliver benefits to local Citizens Advice and the millions of clients we serve every year. The programme team will be responsible for transforming the way we support the local Citizens Advice network. The team will require skills in strategy development, business analysis, service design, process transformation and agile implementation.

In this role, you can expect to

  • Lead our thinking about how Citizens Advice can transform the way it supports a network of almost 300 local Citizens Advice across England and Wales
  • Provide strategic direction, advocacy and thought-leadership
  • Take high-level strategic recommendations and convert them into a portfolio of projects
  • Build, lead and mentor a small, high-performing transformation team that will be empowered to develop, test and implement a high-profile change programme while working closely with people across national and local Citizens Advice
  • Manage timely, high-quality delivery of the programme. Ensure effective governance, risks and dependencies are managed, deliverables meet user needs, and the organisation realises the intended benefits
  • Develop, maintain and be accountable for rigorous business-cases and supporting analysis that underpin the programme
  • Develop our ability to capture and use data to drive decision-making and continuous improvement across our support operations
  • Design and implement high-quality services for the network based on robust analysis, user needs and adopting a ‘test and learn’ approach, leveraging technology and digital tools
  • Regularly work with staff and volunteers across the national business and the wider network
    Facilitate workshops and presentations at all levels of the business, including with the Executive Team and Trustee Board

What we’ll want to see from you

To succeed in this role, we’d like you to tick most of the following:

  • Programme or project management - understands how to lead and manage a programme of change, takes ownership over delivery
  • Strategic thinker - can see the ‘big picture’ and think critically about functions and processes
  • An advocate of collaborative, fast-paced working processes such as Agile and scrum, and be able to lead and coach teams to adopt those processes
  • Experience of Lean, service design and/or Agile methodology to redesign and develop efficient end-to-end services, develop prototypes and experiments to validate propositions
  • An excellent communicator and influencer, adept at facilitating workshops and collaboration, ultimately generating ‘buy-in’ from staff and key stakeholders
  • Ability to conceptualise, design and implement new solutions
  • Delivery mind-set - has a bias to action, and demonstrable ability to make change happen on the ground
  • Prepared to be practical and hands-on. Willing to work as part of a team or individually as required
  • Understanding of how technology can be used to drive process efficiency and improve customer experience, and the challenges posed by digital disruption
  • Ability to bring perspectives from a range of industries and markets and challenge existing processes and ways of working based on evidence and analysis

Ideally

  • Agile, scrum or similar qualified, preferably with experience of applying these methodologies outside of a pure digital setting
  • Experience of working at board and executive level to facilitate strategic decision making
  • Experience of working with external consultants, and an understanding of how external consultants can best be used to add maximum value
  • Understanding of the not-for-profit sector

For more information and to apply, please click the Apply button. 

Citizens Advice values diversity, promotes equality and challenges discrimination. We encourage and welcome applications from people of all backgrounds. We particularly welcome applications from disabled and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people, as they are currently under represented in our workforce.

Closing Date: 11.59pm on Monday 23 July (We reserve the right to close vacancies early in light of a large response.)
Interview Date: TBC

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