• Duration: Permanent

• Salary: Circa £43,000 per annum

• Job Level: 4

• Hours: 35 hours per week. Other flexible arrangements will be considered.

• Disclosure Level: Basic. This role involves no direct or indirect work with children.

• Reports to: Director of Innovation

• Location: Hybrid working from home and at 1 Westfield Avenue, London E20 1HZ

  At the UK Committee for UNICEF (UNICEF UK), we pull together to achieve the best possible results for children in danger around the world.  We believe in an inclusive workplace and in the power of fulfilled colleagues who share the same values and goals, enjoy their work and are motivated to do their utmost for children. 

Our work is guided by the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which recognise the universality of children’s rights.

ABOUT THE TEAM

The Innovation Team exists to bring a structured approach to developing new fundraising and campaigning products, and to foster an entrepreneurial spirit that allows everyone to innovate with confidence, impress our supporters, and thrive in a future we don’t yet know.​

This passionate and collaborative team is driven by audience insights and exists to drive growth in income, influence, and impact for children. The small but essential innovation team cuts across all the fundraising teams to uncover and incubate new product ideas for growth. We have recently written a new Innovation Strategy and identified key areas for growth, so it’s an exciting time to join the team and explore these new opportunities.

The Innovation Team sits in the Innovation, People and Strategy Directorate.

ABOUT THE ROLE

The Innovation Manager’s primary purpose is to lead the development of new products, by using a structured approach to innovation to achieve our strategic objectives. This role works closely with other stakeholders across UNICEF UK to bring new products to market. The Innovation Manager will lead the delivery of multiple innovation sprint projects including scoping new opportunities, co-creating solutions, prototyping and testing ideas and developing delivery mechanisms.

What we will expect you to achieve

Innovation Pipeline Management

• Work across UNICEF UK teams and with other key stakeholders to identify and develop new ideas that will deliver our strategic objectives.

• Prioritise ideas, identify risks and develop high impact solutions focusing on strategic alignment.

• Work with external stakeholders to explore potential collaborations and new product ideas.

New Product Idea Development

• Support the discovery of potential product ideas using audience insight, key trends and competitor analysis.

• Define focused briefs for new projects beyond the core activities of UNICEF UK, ensuring strategic relevance and clear objectives.

• Develop ideas using various innovation techniques and facilitate ideation workshops.

Prototype, Test and Launch

• Use appropriate prototyping techniques (for both digital and offline products) to test ideas.

• Define clear KPIs and success criteria for testing, implementing clear feedback loops to develop the prototypes.

• Use learnings to inform a business case and manage operational risks, seeking support from key stakeholders for further development and investment.

• Work with relevant teams to scale up and fully launch a product to market.

Shared Values

• Demonstrate and model a commitment to our shared values, behaviours and inclusive practices as set out in Our Shared Commitment. 

BEHAVIOURS EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

This section contains the essential behaviours, experience, knowledge and skills needed in order to be effective and successful in this role. All criteria in this section are essential.

Effective behaviours

Supporter driven and mission aligned

• Is committed to children and their rights and motivated to work towards achieving a world that is fit for every child.

• Uses in-depth knowledge of supporters, the market, the charity sector and cross-industry innovation best practices to predict future trends and develop a deep understanding of audience needs.

Creating and innovating

• Scans the external environment for trends, insights, ideas and best practise that could benefit UNICEF UK’s work.

• Supports UNICEF UK teams to use innovation and welcomes new ideas that are focused on the delivery of strategic priorities.

• Contributes ideas, approaches and insights that enable innovation that aligned with strategic priorities.

Collaboration

• Consults others and shares expertise, know-how and ideas with colleagues across the organisation for best results.

• Values diversity, respecting and drawing on colleagues’ different perspectives, skills, experience and knowledge.

Analytical

• Drives an insight led approach within the team.

• Plans, prioritises and effectively monitors and evaluates performance.

• Questions assumptions and seeks further insight to inform decision making.

• Able to derive insights from complex data.

Communication

• Pitches new complex ideas clearly and with impact to both internal and external stakeholders.

• Conveys complex ideas using a variety of methods to engage an audience and win understanding and support.

Results focused

• Prioritises and sustains focus on work that will have the greatest impact and achieve the goals and outcomes of the innovation strategy.

• Reviews results and extracts learning to optimise future performance.

• Anticipates internal/external challenges that could impact UNICEF UK’s work and adapts approach accordingly.

Relevant experience

• Demonstrable success of developing new mass market products.

• Experience using a range of prototyping techniques to test new ideas and concepts with audiences, including digital products and campaigns.

• Experience of audience research and deriving insights from a variety of data sources.

• Experience of managing multiple projects and engaging a range of different stakeholders.

Specific knowledge and skills

• Awareness of innovation techniques (for example using a Design Thinking approach, or the 4D/Double Diamond approach).