What if there was a network of walking routes that connected all of Great Britain’s towns and cities? That’s what we are making. Want to help us?

We are working to inspire more people to walk and wheel more often, further, and for more purposes by creating a new national walking network. Collaborating with others is at the heart of what we do. 

As a visionary community-interest-company Slow Ways has received 7 years of funding from the Lottery Fund, to create transformational change across an ecosystem. 

We’ve made a great start. So far volunteers have created nearly 8,000 routes that stretch for over 120,000km. Our current phase of work is focussed on engaging people from across Great Britain to walk, review and survey all these routes.

Our dynamic core team of 8 together with tens of thousands of contributors and supporters are spread across England, Scotland and Wales. 

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We are looking for someone to guide how we nurture our growing community of staff, volunteers and website users. From walking epic journeys to surveying their local routes, people are at the heart of Slow Ways. We want to support and recognise their endeavours while helping the initiative as a whole to flourish. Far from being just a senior manager, you will need to provide high quality direction and be willing to deliver day-to-day customer service too.

This is a hybrid working role. You will work from our London or Exeter hub at least once a week with bi-monthly meetings taking place in different locations across Great Britain.

You will be responsible for:

• Supporting contributors, collaborators, volunteers, users, walkers and wheelers to have positive and enriching relationships with Slow Ways.

• Nurturing the wellbeing of our staff, volunteers and community. 

• Growing the Slow Ways community, including driving inclusion, equity and diversity across all our activities.

• Developing and managing ways to listen to feedback from our community including running and growing our sounding groups and forums

• Volunteer and talent management, unlocking and nurturing people’s desires and abilities to contribute to Slow Ways.

• Working closely with our Story Leads to develop and share diverse, inclusive and inspiring stories. 

• Managing a small team to deliver exemplary community support, including all website interactions (reviews, comments and surveys), customer queries and feedback.

• Supporting users to contribute to Slow Ways and our aims

Desirable skills include your ability to:

• Care for Slow Ways users and future users.

• Remember names, pick up the phone to talk to people.

• Assess people’s and communities needs. 

• Promote changes within organisations and associated communities.

• Deliver best inclusion, equity, diversity and safeguarding policies and practices.

• Nurture a positive working culture across an organisation or initiative .

• Deal confidently with conflict.

• Manage and grow an effective team.

• Motivate and support large numbers of volunteers.

• Use software to plan, monitor and schedule social media campaigns.

• Provide presentations and workshops to staff, stakeholders and partner organisations.

• Be confident contributing to online forums and on social media

• Organise events, get-togethers and walk opportunities (although you don’t have to be a walk leader yourself)

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We are looking for people who will:

• Care for and contribute to our community’s needs, diversity and cohesion

• Enjoy being outdoors and excited by the idea of using Slow Ways

• Be happy to get their hands (and feet) dirty

• Be playful and willing to experiment with ideas

• Be agile, flexible and open minded

You do not need to:

• Be a “walker”

• Live in the countryside

• Be able to read maps

Inclusion matters to us. We are particularly interested in hearing from people who have lived experience, or experience of working with/for groups that are marginalised or minoritised in the outdoors sector.

We are an equal opportunities organisation. All our employment decisions are made without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, citizenship or marital status. You must be located and legally allowed to work in the UK.

Visit our website for more details about Slow Ways.

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REVISED PROVISIONAL RECRUITMENT TIMETABLE

First interviews: w/c 24 October 22 (remote)

Second interviews: w/c 31 October 22 (Central London)

Offer to the successful candidate: w/c 07 November 22

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Unique benefits of all our roles include:

• Flexible working with job shares considered

• Time and budget to walk or wheel Slow Ways

• Annual training budget and conference allowance

• “Walking leave” bonuses if we hit our targets

• Accruement of one reflective journey day for every year of service