Director of Impact and Evidence

Salary: £65,000 - £75,000 per annum

Location: Youth Futures office in either Leeds, Birmingham or London, with regular meetings across England. Please specify your preferred office location when applying.

Reporting to: CEO

Deadline: 18th May 2020

Transforming youth employment

The Youth Futures Foundation is a new, independent, not for profit organisation set up to tackle youth unemployment with a £90million endowment from the Reclaim Fund. We are looking for bold and impactful ways to help young people find and keep good jobs. There are over 750,000 young people not in education or employment in the UK. Young people are twice as likely to be unemployed than older adults in the labour market and BAME and disadvantaged young people disproportionately bear the brunt of it.

We are building an ‘empowerment foundation’ to identify practical solutions that work in a complex world yet are simple and cost effective enough to roll out across multiple locations, to reach as many young people as possible. Youth Futures will apply rigorous evaluation methods to determine what works, then channel resources and funding into sharing learnings and working in partnership to grow good practice.  We recognise that whilst developing and supporting young people will go some way towards tackling youth unemployment and under employment, these are systemic issues. We are seeking a significant change in national behaviour that dramatically improves the number of young people accessing - and progressing in - work.

The Youth Futures Foundation is committed to:

a)      Equipping young people from diverse backgrounds to access and progress in work

b)      Removing structural and systemic barriers to employment and progression

Youth Futures will take an evidence led structural and systems-based approach that recognises the importance of national learnings and local context, as well as promoting strong coordination and partnership working across government, funders, delivery organisations and employers.

We will work in partnership to close the employment gap by:

• Building the evidence base

• Understanding and highlighting structural and systemic barriers

• Improving the quality of employment programmes for young people

• Empowering government to carry out evidence-based policy making

• Equipping employers to improve productivity through hiring the best talent

Director of Impact and Evidence – Job Description

We are looking for an inspiring Director of Impact and Evidence to shape the trajectory of the Youth Futures Foundation and put reliable evidence at the fingertips of those seeking to transform the youth employment ecosystem. You will set up and lead the Impact and Evidence team to identify and produce research, evaluate interventions funded by Youth Futures, create evidence tools, gap maps and frameworks to help policy makers, practitioners and employers make smart decisions about supporting young people towards and into work.

Key Responsibilities

Direct the Youth Futures approach to research, evaluation and knowledge sharing, including:

• Establish and grow a world class team recognised as the ‘go to’ experts and convenors on best practice in youth employment, including the Head of Impact and Evaluation, Head of Research, and each of their direct reports

• Develop a culture of learning, collaboration and excellence – encouraging questions, teamwork and a laser focus on connecting evidence with practice to bring about positive change in the real world

• Lead the Foundation’s efforts to ensure that rigorous quantitative data and evidence is systematically captured, used to inform practice, and synthesised to transform the youth employment landscape

• Ensure the Youth Futures Foundation and wider stakeholders have a strong awareness and understanding – and a single shared view - of economic and labour market data linked to youth unemployment issues by collating, reporting, interpreting, tracking and sharing data at a headline level and on specific cohorts, regions or demographics

• Map the evidence base to determine priority issues for Youth Futures market transformation activities; collate and analyse existing research and data; produce evidence tools, maps and frameworks; draw out useful learnings, identify evidence gaps and develop a long term strategy for building the evidence base through writing, commissioning and collating new research

• Identify gaps in government, employer and practitioner knowledge and establishing how we prioritise and address them

• Provide expertise, set standards and guide colleagues and external evaluation teams on the design and development of measures, metrics and data systems that are rigorous and consistent

• Ensure our Impact and Evidence work is informed by, and influences, Youth Futures wider work, including:

o   Working with the Systems Change team to feed into national marketing campaigns, policy influencing, and the development of ‘big ideas’ to transform the youth employment ecosystem

o   Working with the Grants and Social Investment team to ensure we fund interventions that apply techniques demonstrated to work, and ensuring appropriate evaluation is built into all the work we fund

o   Provide support to the Finance & Operations team in monitoring and tracking expenditure on research and evaluation activity

• Work in partnership with What Works Centres, leading employment think tanks, government data labs and others to collectively compile, create and promote data and evidence that is high quality and useful for practitioners, employers and government to bring about transformational change

• Lead on ensuring the communication of our evidence maps, toolkits, research and evaluations is clear, accessible to practitioners, employers and policy makers (not just the research community), actionable and accurate

• Generate widespread commitment to improving youth employment outcomes through sharing evidence and learnings; speaking on television and radio, at conferences and events, producing thought leadership articles, published work, social media content and press articles

• Manage a large budget diligently, including quarterly forecasts, expenditure tracking and reporting to the Board

• As a leader in a newly forming organisation, fully contribute to:

o   developing the overall strategy of Youth Futures Foundation

o   creating a positive, supportive and effective culture within the organisation

o   organisational development; developing new roles and ways of working; recruiting and developing new team members

o   supporting the Board, CEO and fellow Directors to make Youth Futures fully operational

o   establishing Youth Futures reputation in the youth employment ecosystem

Person specification

Experience and Knowledge

• A track record of leadership in strategic planning, management of complex projects, staff teams and budgets, and coordinating research and evaluation projects.

• A degree that is relevant to this area and/or appropriate training

• Experience of developing and implementing strategy for a team or department

• Excellent at writing and commissioning high quality research for publication, policy influencing and informing practice

• Knowledge of a broad range of technical skills in research and evaluation methods (both quantitative and qualitative)

• Experience of critically appraising behaviour change evaluations, systems evaluation, impact evaluation and research design, for their strengths and weaknesses

• Knowledge of data and evidence in the labour market/youth sector, or on related issues

• Experience of supporting, coaching and developing a diverse team of people. Willingness to manage an Impact and Evidence team that is geographically dispersed and provide support and oversight to staff from other teams who sit in your geographic location

• Experience of engaging multiple stakeholders, encouraging connectivity and networks within and outside the Youth Futures Foundation, and be equally confident working alongside both local and national organisations.

Skills and Competencies

• Strategic thinking and analytical abilities: ability to dissect complex challenges, understand root causes and develop creative yet sound approaches to problem-solving and decision-making.

• Execution: strong project management skills, adherence to deadlines, prioritisation, sense of responsibility and accountability and the ability to effectively multi-task and work with diverse colleagues across teams.

• Consultative and advisory skills: experience working in a consultative or advisory role; demonstrated success managing partners or internal teams and ability to achieve impact through others.

• Leadership: possesses the highest professional integrity with comfortable delivering tough messages, providing objective perspectives, and framing important choices.

• Partnership and relationship building; strong representation of the impact and evaluation team both within the Foundation and externally, effective relationship management with colleagues at all levels, intercultural knowledge, strategic partnership building for greater impact.

• Decision-making: ability to evaluate risks and opportunities, using analytical and strong problem-solving skills. Ability to usher others through an effective decision-making process.

• ·Integration: ability to identify where complementary skillsets are needed and to pull in those capabilities from within the team, across the organisation and using external experts. Demonstrates inclusiveness, collaboration and respect for all stakeholders, and represents broad organisational interests. Communication: interpersonal communication abilities internally and externally; exceptional listening skills, excellent written and oral skills.

• Firm understanding and ability to track income and expenditure using spreadsheets and data

• Strong IT skills, including use of MS Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc), shared online folders, calendars and contacts

Mindset

• Genuine personal commitment to Youth Futures mission, vision and values

• This is an exciting opportunity in a newly-forming organisation. As such, many of the systems and processes that are normal in an established organisation either do not exist or are newly forming. To be successful in this role, the candidate will need:

  • to thrive when operating in uncertainty

  • be a highly motivated self-starter

  • a proactive and flexible approach, able to identify and take forward opportunities and work effectively in partnership with others.

  • a positive and can-do attitude, willing to roll their sleeves up to get into details where necessary

  • a willingness to collaborate internally and externally to achieve our mission

  • strong leadership communication skills

Things to know

As part of Youth Futures Foundation’s safeguarding policy, all employees are subject to a basic Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check