We are recruiting for an Operations Manager (Centre for Collective Intelligence Design)

The Centre for Collective Intelligence Design at Nesta is looking for a highly-motivated self-starter, with exceptional organisational skills to help us with the day to day operations of the team. You will be responsible for ensuring that we have the right systems and processes in place to deliver an exciting portfolio of public engagement projects, to manage our resources and plan ahead and our financial reporting. 

This is an exciting time to join CCID as we are preparing for a three year process to spin out from Nesta. A key responsibility for the operations manager will be to support the team with preparing for spinning out and ensuring everything is in place to ensure a smooth transition to being a stand alone organisation. 

You’ll be right for this role if you’re not phased by a long list of tasks and are adept at prioritising them whilst sometimes juggling last-minute requests or enquiries. You can prioritise effectively, communicate persuasively, solve problems autonomously and you relish building new relationships. You’ve got solid operations management experience, hold yourself to the highest professional standards and are confident using project management and CRM tools such as Asana and Salesforce.    

About CCID

Nesta’s Centre for Collective Intelligence Design helps create new ways for communities to use technology to harness their insights, ideas and power to act on the problems that matter to them and create the futures they want. We know well-designed systems can help promote healthy collective action at scale, but too often technology is designed to solve the needs of individuals or large organisations. 

Our mission is to design digital tools and products that allow communities to respond collectively to challenges, and that help public and voluntary sector institutions strengthen trust and collaboration with citizens.  

We work with external partners to help them understand where and how collective intelligence approaches can help address the problems they’re working on. We apply collective intelligence design - which brings together insights from diverse groups of people, with new sources of data (such as sensor or mobile phone data) and digital technologies (including AI) - to develop bespoke solutions to those problems. We use rigorous research methods to test, learn and evaluate each solution. 

The Role

You will be responsible for: 

Financial and operational modelling

• Responsible for the financial and operational modelling for the Centre

• Maintaining a strategic overview of the mix of externally-funded projects and developing strategies for increasing long-term profitability including the leverage of staff and ‘asset building’ projects

• Provide regular updates to the Co-Directors on our budget position, and work closely with Nesta’s finance team to ensure accurate forecasting, monitoring and budget setting  

Project profitability and team productivity

• Help us make the most of the projects we’re delivering: Working with the Co-Directors to maximise the profitability of the team, providing project level profitability measures and identifying operational efficiencies

• Help us work out when we can start new projects: Develop and maintain a scheduling system for project deployments, proactively identify and tackle project bottlenecks and capacity issues across the team. Working with the Co-Directors and Project Delivery Managers to make strategic decisions based on project skill requirements, team capabilities, development needs and profitability

• Help us become a high performing team: Responsible for monitoring and driving improvements in the team’s productivity and utilisation rates.  

• Help develop and track progress against team OKRs 

Spin-out planning 

• Working closely with CCID Co-directors and Nesta CFO to prepare CCID to spin-out from Nesta

• Lead on the legal process for transitioning CCID to become a company independent of Nesta and all necessary legal/contractual requirements for a potential spin-out

Team recruitment, development and knowledge transfer 

• Manage the team’s recruitment processes and ensure consistency and inclusion in our approach

• Coordinate and manage the induction processes for all new recruits and ensure team usage of shared tools and resources such as Asana and Salesforce. 

• Develop and maintain a system for identifying the development/skills needs of all staff (in consultation with Co-Directors and Managers), and ensuring that project scheduling decisions provide on-the-job skills building and coaching opportunities

• Develop and maintain an overview of team experiences and learning on each project, feeding into manager performance reviews 

• Managing team-wide meetings and introducing new team-building and learning initiatives.

• Ensuring all team members understand and adhere to Nesta-wide policies, and are comfortable using Nesta systems  

• Ensuring effective and consistent documentation of all our work, and maintaining efficient use of Google suite

• Managing the staff survey to help us understand how our team are faring and putting in place new initiatives to support our development

• Lead on building a culture of learning across the team, through systematic debriefings after projects, and facilitating the team to share latest ideas, thinking and approaches 

Marketing and business development 

• Monitor the business development pipeline - assessing new opportunities and providing strategic guidance to help the team prioritise business development efforts

• Supporting co-directors with leadership of proposal development, including supporting the team to develop / contribute to proposals and submissions and construct budgets for new projects and bids 

• Maintaining an up-to-date database of team contacts in Salesforce  

• Lead on CCID external communications coordination, and responsibility for the bi-monthly newsletter

• Responsible for updating the communications planner and CCID webpages frequently, and helping to identify and maximise opportunities to promote the team’s work through identifying publicity opportunities through other institutions, social media, and at external events. 

Legal 

• Work closely with Nesta’s legal and finance departments to produce and sign contracts and complete the associated procurement processes

• Manage procurement processes for external suppliers 

Other 

• Act as primary contact for all business processes and systems-related queries, keeping up-to-date with Nesta-wide developments, providing guidance and support to the team.

• Manage all team office equipment needs

• Undertaking general office duties, including, assisting with travel booking

Experience and Skills:

Essential

• Strong strategic skills - able to see the bigger picture, and provide strategic thinking that supports leaders with decision-making, and helps teams manage risks and clarify priorities

• Experience in the management of a team and working with stakeholders at all levels.

• Demonstrated experience of contributing to continuous improvement of team practices, processes and systems, paired with an ability to spot opportunities for improvement and propose and implement new structures, processes, guidance and policies to support growth. 

• Experience of strategic budget setting, budget management and managing team resourcing.

• Experience with implementing new team / organisation wide systems and processes

• Significant Knowledge and experience of collaboration, project management and financial tools such as the google suite (especially google sheets), Sales Force, PowerBI and AdaptiveInsights and Asana.

• Demonstrated experience in using and implementing project management frameworks, such as Agile.

• Financial acumen and attention-to-detail for robust budget management and monitoring. Experience with developing budgets and financial proposals as part of business development 

• Experience in Agile project management and working practices (SCRUM/Lean/DSDM/APMG)

Desirable

• Experience with supporting spin-out processes, start-ups or setting up other new organisations

• Active interest in CCID’s mission 

What we offer

Salary: £47.9k - £64k (subject to seniority and experience) plus array of benefits, including private medical insurance, dental insurance, the ability to buy and sell annual leave, eyecare vouchers and more  

Location: This role is based in London, Blackfriars, hybrid working arrangement with a minimum of two days in the office

Term: 12 months maternity cover contract

Hours: This is a full-time (37.5 hours) role but we offer a range of flexible working arrangements and encourage our people to take advantage of them. Many do. 

Making an application 

To apply for this role, please submit your application before 08.00am on 9 September 2024. 

Interviews will take place on w/c September 16th.

At Nesta, we believe that a diverse workforce leads to an organisation that is more innovative, more creative and gets better results. 

We want our workforce to represent the diversity of the people and communities we serve. We also want our workplace to be one where different experiences, expertise and perspectives are valued, and where everyone is encouraged to grow and develop. 

This means that when we are recruiting, we actively seek to reach a diverse pool of candidates. It also means that we are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that potential employees may need to in order to be successful. 

We recognise the importance of a good balance between work and home life, so we do everything we can to accommodate flexible working, including working from home, compressed or part-time hours, job shares and other arrangements.   

Please just let us know in your application or at any stage throughout the process (and beyond) if these are options you’d like to explore.