Evidence and Insight Officer

Are you passionate about evidence and research? Do you have experience of creating and sharing actionable insights? If so, its an exciting time to join Samaritans’ Research and Evaluation team!

As Evidence and Insight Officer, you will help to ensure we are evidence-led and well-informed by finding new and engaging ways to translate, synthesise and generate evidence and insights related to suicide prevention.

​

• Salary: £32,500 - £35,000 per annum
• Permanent role
• Full time (35 hours per week)
• Hybrid working: linked to our Ewell (Surrey) office, with home working and the option to work from our London office too
• In-person working: Meeting in person and working collaboratively are things we value. Mandated in-person meetings will be in place from Jan ’25. This allows for training, in person collaboration, team building, line management and other relationship building opportunities. This is around 2 days per month.
• We are passionate about flexible working; talk to us about your preferences

​

Key responsibilities:

​

• Coordinating and developing Samaritan’s core evidence base and the provision of evidence related to suicide and self-harm, including by monitoring official suicide data, and creating evidence summaries for staff and volunteers.
• Identifying research gaps and generating new evidence to improve our understanding of the experiences of people with lived and living experience of suicide, self-harm, and Samaritans’ services.
• Providing high quality and timely evidence and insights support to internal and external audiences.
• Taking a lead role in ensuring that all research across the organisation is conducted in line with our research ethics policy, and providing secretariat to Samaritans Research Ethics Board.

​

Job Specification available here. 

​

About you:

​

We are looking for someone with excellent organisational and communication skills, who is pro-active and passionate about best practice in evidence synthesis, research design and delivery, and the communication of insights.

The ideal candidate will have:

​

• Excellent understanding of quantitative and qualitative approaches to evidence gathering
• Proven ability to analyse and critically assess all kinds of evidence
• The ability to turn complex information, including quantitative data, into key insights and recommendations for different audiences
• Experience in survey design and administration
• Knowledge of a broad range of research ethics and integrity issues

​

Our benefits:

​

So, you want to work for us? Good choice. We like it here too. We offer competitive salaries, flexible and hybrid working to suit your needs, family-friendly policies, 28 days annual leave inclusive of wellbeing days and a matched pension contribution up to 5%. You’ll have a structured induction and ongoing projects, secondments & learning opportunities. We also have colleague-led affinity groups made up of people with shared identities.

Your health and wellbeing is our priority. We have a staff community of Mental Health First Aiders, a Health Cash Plan and an Employee Assistance Programme. You’ll have free subscriptions to Headspace (your personal guide to mindfulness, sleep, focus, movement, and more) & Perkbox (an employee benefits platform with online exercise classes). That’s not all. We listen to your ideas and have staff forum and social committee networks.

​

Hybrid and flexible working

We are a flexible organisation, and we embrace hybrid working – a mix of connecting in person and remotely. We’re aware that the world is changing, and we all want and need different things from our work and home lives. So, if you need to walk the dog, go to the gym, or have commitments outside of work, we’re open to talking through flexible working options that work for you and us.

​

Being Inclusive

We recognise the enormous benefits and the social justice imperatives of ensuring diversity at every level of our organisation. Samaritans is wholly committed to inclusion and diversity and to building a culture and environment where everyone is appreciated for the unique person they are. To ensure Samaritans is representative of those we support and who support us, we particularly welcome applications from Disabled, BAME and LGBTQ+ candidates, as these people are under-represented at Samaritans.

​

Application

​

If this sounds like the opportunity for you, please apply. You’ll be asked to upload your CV and answer a number of application questions including the following Questions;

Why do you want to work on suicide prevention and what do you think might be challenging about this topic? (300 words max)

Tell us about a time you completed an evidence review. (300 words max)

What factors do you think are important when considering the quality of a piece of published research? (300 words max)

Applications close Sunday 20th October. Video interviews to be held on the 29th and 30th October.