We are Nesta. The UK’s innovation agency for social good. We design, test and scale new solutions to society’s biggest problems, changing millions of lives for the better.
We confront challenges that affect millions of people, from chronic childhood inequality to ill-health and the climate crisis.
We believe that innovation is more possible now than ever before. We see opportunities to mobilise citizens and influence behaviour. A wealth of private and public capital that can be used more creatively. Pools of data to mine.
And so we draw on these rich resources by bringing together multidisciplinary teams: data scientists, designers and behavioural scientists, practitioners at the frontline, academics; and people with lived experience.
Together, we design, test and scale new solutions to society’s biggest problems. We partner with frontline organisations, build new businesses and work to change whole systems. Harnessing the rigour of science and the creativity of design, we work relentlessly to put ideas to the test.
The role
You will work on a range of different projects, either within a single mission or across two or more, meaning your tasks will vary day to day.
Key roles and responsibilities
About this mission: A Healthy Life
We want to increase the number of years lived in good health for all, and particularly those most affected by health inequalities.
The poorest people in the UK die almost a decade before their more affluent counterparts, and experience ill-health almost 20 years earlier. COVID-19 has exacerbated this disparity, but also generated public demand and political will to address it. To tackle this injustice, we are focusing on two of the biggest drivers of lost years of healthy life: obesity, caused by unhealthy food environments, and loneliness. Today, nearly one in three adults in the UK is obese, while some 9 million people report ‘always’ or ‘often’ feeling lonely.
Your role
You will work on a range of different projects, either within a single mission or across two or more, meaning your tasks will vary day to day. Alongside your core duties, team members have the opportunity to support missions more broadly, by supporting overall delivery of projects and/or working as a mission representative for critical organisational priorities, such as Nesta’s commitment to Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI).
This role will suit someone who is curious and excited to develop new skills by working on a range of projects: one day you might be conducting user research to understand how a service works (or doesn’t); another you may be conducting data analysis, or helping to design and implement a new way of doing things to improve outcomes.
Your responsibilities:
- Support on the delivery of projects. This means working on the end-to-end project cycle; conducting primary and secondary research, contributing to the creation of a theory of change, devise novel solutions, working closely with stakeholders
- Quickly get to grips with the new areas, topics, and contexts that Nesta projects take place in. Working across a variety of projects means you must be able to develop domain and contextual competence fast.
- Support project coordination and management, including liaising with partners, preparing agendas and minutes for meetings, and coordinating updates.
- Communicate and disseminate the team’s work externally
- Supporting development of new work including scoping, research, and writing bids and proposals.
Experience and skills
Minimum qualifications:
- Project/ programme management skills: you can plan work and execute against that plan; identify and act on risks and issues; ensure that key stakeholders are engaged throughout; and keep track of spend against budget.
- Research skills: you comprehend the fundamentals of exploratory research and evaluation (interpret research findings; understand common statistics, assess the strength of evidence for something; understand good practice for key research activities and analyse data sets to pull out key summary statistics and trends).
- Ability to quickly build contextual competence in unfamiliar topics (e.g. learn what key jargon means, be credible in conversations with stakeholders, understand what is measured and what is important).
- Demonstrate at least one of the following:
- Experience applying one or more of the following disciplines: behavioural science, design thinking, experimental/quasi-experimental design, quantitative analysis, arts and culture methods; AND/OR
- Experience in the practice or policy context of one of the missions: e.g. deep knowledge of food or obesity policy
Preferred qualifications:
- Technical expertise in one or more of the following areas: behavioural science, design thinking, experimental/quasi-experimental design, arts and culture methods.
- Facilitation skills: e.g. running workshops.
- Excellent writing skills to tailor content to different audiences.
- Exceptional visual communication skills (e.g. advanced PowerPoint, data visualisation, animation).
Other useful information
Salary: £33.7k (Analyst) £42.4k (Senior Analyst) plus array of benefits, including health cash plans, dental insurance, the ability to buy and sell annual leave, eyecare vouchers and more
Location: This role is based in Blackfriars, Central London, but we offer flexibility for our people to work remotely.
Hours: This is a full-time role but we offer a range of flexible working arrangements and encourage our people to take advantage of them. Many do.
Reports to: Mission Manager
Making an application:
To apply for this role, please submit your application before 8:00am on the 22nd of March 2021. Interviews will take place w/c 29th of March 2021.
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.