Head Of It And Facilities Jobs in Tn27

SUMMARY

This maternity cover role will be responsible for the Lab's internal workings - people, culture, ways of working and operations. As an Executive level role, it will share overall responsibility for the Lab’s impact with the other members of the Exec (CEO, COO, Director of Programmes and Campaigns).

The role will be specifically responsible for:

• the people function, including team days, our annual retreat, and internal communications, as well as Human Resource management and our staff handbook),
• programme support, including stewardship of our Monitoring, Evaluation, learning and Planning system),
• coordinating the team’s fundraising work, and
• managing other areas of our operations, such as IT and infrastructure, including our new CRM system.
• The post-holder will be responsible for line managing the Operations Manager.

The post-holder will work closely with the COO, who will be leading on finance and governance. Together, they will be responsible for drafting the plan for the Lab’s Operations function in 2026.

This post is a 13 month fixed term contract, running from mid-May 2025 to mid-June 2026.

LOCATION

The team work remotely for the majority of the time, but as this role is responsible for people and culture ideally you will be able to attend monthly ‘team together days’ in London (travel paid if outside of London area) as well as an annual two-night retreat elsewhere in the UK in November. However, we don’t want this to be a barrier to applicants, so you can let us know at the interview stage if this would not be possible or will cause you challenges.

RESPONSIBILITIES

People: Ensure we recruit, retain, support and nourish a strong staff team and maintain a culture that reflects our values of ambition, collaboration and empowerment.

• Lead implementation of the Lab’s people and human resources strategy (together with the COO), in line with our core values, to maximise the team’s contribution to our mission (including team structure and roles, recruitment, onboarding and retention, staff handbook, and professional development).
• Develop and hold our team culture (together with the COO), aligned to the Lab’s core values, and ensure that the organisation maintains an effective, efficient and human working environment. Help ensure that we live our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and justice, in general as well as in areas that fall under your remit.
• Lead internal communications, ensuring that the team are informed about and involved in new developments as appropriate, including planning and coordinating team away days through the year.
• Support effective management of staff: Line manage the Operations Manager. Support Heads of Programme and others to develop and manage staff and freelancers, ensuring that we treat all our people fairly and responsibly.

Operations: Oversee effective systems and support colleagues who manage those systems.

• Oversee and support the Operations Manager to ensure that our core processes run smoothly; we have the infrastructure to support our growth, including office space and IT, and supplies; and that they are able to effectively support the programme team with reports, events and other projects.
• Oversee the Lab’s fundraising process, including identifying and researching potential new funders, maintaining our overview of our fundraising pipeline, funder timelines, monthly priorities, and record keeping. Support the Lab team to manage funding proposals and coordinate the development of funding proposal budgets, working closely with programme leads. Ensure funding reporting requirements are met, including supporting programme leads to draft programme reports, and the Finance Manager to prepare financial reports.
• Coordinate and oversee the Lab’s Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning and Planning system ensuring the team have what they need to complete the various elements, meet deadlines, and get the most out of the process. [RSS1] 
• Ensure high standards of information management across the organisation, enabling staff to share and access resources, insights and know-how. This includes maintaining high standards of data protection and privacy that embody the Lab’s commitment to responsible use of data, and maintaining the Lab’s new CRM system. 

Executive Team support: you will be a collaborative and engaged member of a strong executive team.

• Lead and manage organisational development projects to ensure that the Lab has effective, appropriate operational policies and processes, and that staff understand and implement these policies and processes.
• Be a collaborative, engaged and supportive colleague and be willing to take on or change responsibilities to help the organisation operate effectively, including offering general support to the other members of the Exec as needed.

YOUR PROFILE

Ideally you will have the following key skills and experience, but we know that all candidates will vary and we are looking for the best fit, not the perfect unicorn.

We hope you will:

Be a caring, collaborative and effective people manager, team player, and organisational culture builder committed to creating an ambitious, collaborative and empowering culture.

• You will love supporting others to succeed, helping them to learn and grow, and develop their resilience and self-care, but also to support and care for people when work or life are difficult.
• You will have experience and a passion for ensuring recruitment, induction, personal development and other processes and culture work to attract, recruit, retain and support high quality, committed staff.

Be a well organised project and function manager with a strong understanding of systems and operations, supporting the team, board and CEO to keep on top of organisational systems such as monitoring, evaluation, learning and planning (MEL-P) and fundraising, as well as day-to-day coordination of various other processes

Have a strong commitment to the vision, aims and values of the Lab.

• A desire to work in a collaborative, empowering and ambitious organisation, and develop the Lab’s culture with care, sensitivity energy and good humour, taking pride in enabling others to succeed.
• Demonstrable dedication to equity, diversity, inclusion and justice and an understanding of intersectionality.

See the full job pack (including interview dates and information) and apply via the link.