We're on the lookout for a Venture Support Manager to join The Ventures Lab team at The Challenges Group.

This role is at Senior Manager level and part of our senior team in Scotland, reporting to the Chief Executive.

Download the full recruitment pack below or from our website:thechallengesgroup.com/jobs

About us:

Challenges Group is an international enterprise development organisation which improves organisational capabilities through learning and leadership development for people and strengthening enterprises and their ecosystems. The Ventures Lab by Challenges Group provides an inclusive, supportive path for aspiring or early-stage entrepreneurs to bring their purpose-led businesses to life.

thechallengesgroup.com | theventureslab.com

We are seeking a dynamic and experienced individual to join Humanist Society Scotland as our Head of Ceremonies.

This is an exciting and unique opportunity to be involved in far-reaching wedding, funeral and naming services across the entire country. Over one million people in Scotland attend a humanist ceremony every year and this role holder has a unique opportunity to shape how these services are delivered across a wide range of communities the length and breadth of Scotland.

As the Head of Ceremonies, you will play a pivotal role in overseeing all aspects of our ceremonies department, ensuring seamless operations, maintaining high standards, and fostering relationships with both internal and external stakeholders.

We are especially interested in hearing from someone who has experience in strategic development of marketing and promoting services.

As a highly motivated self-directed individual you will manage a network of over 140 celebrants and line manage two support staff. We are seeking someone with considerable people management skills and a strong knowledge of marketing and promotion to direct and ensure delivery of growing the current demand and market share for our services.

In order to avoid conflict of interest and as this role has key management responsibilities in overseeing the delivery of all of our ceremony services this role holder cannot also hold a position as a celebrant. Individuals who are interested in becoming a celebrant can register their interest here instead.

Responsibilities:

• Oversee Day-to-Day Operations:

• Provide guidance and support to the ceremonies support team, including line management of two staff.
• Maintaining strong relationships with key contractors such as our celebrant trainers, emergency out of hours support and celebrant area officers.

• Budget Management:

• Ensure good oversight and planning of related budgets including delegating responsibilities to members of team where appropriate

• Promotional Plan:

• Developing and implementing business plans for sustainable growth, based on sound research and analysis of the competitive markets and future opportunities and then creating and implementing strategies to grow the business.
• Utilise various marketing channels and techniques to reach target audiences effectively.

New Celebrant Recruitment:

• Oversee recruitment and training provision for new celebrants working closely with our trainers.
• Working with our celebrant network to develop meaningful mentoring relationships for new celebrants.
• Ensure feedback from trainees helps further develop and improve our training.

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Coordination:

• Coordinate ongoing CPD opportunities for celebrants, including organising gatherings and training sessions to enhance their skills and knowledge.

Reviews Oversight:

• Oversee and coordinate professional reviews of ceremonies.

Complaints Management:

• Address and resolve complaints from clients in a timely and professional manner.

Relationships with External Stakeholders:

• Cultivate and maintain strong relationships with external stakeholders, including funeral directors, wedding venues and other relevant partners.
• Collaborate with external partners to expand our celebrant network and reach new audiences.
• Sharing best practices and learning from professional networks of other humanist leaders and groups.

Person Specification:

• Proven experience in a leadership role, preferably within service delivery. This could be in the public, private or third sector.
• Previous professional success in creating a meaningful promotional and marketing strategy to help increase market share.
• Ability to proactively anticipate emerging trends and threats and apply business intelligence to react in response.
• Strong organisational and project management skills, with the ability to multitask and prioritise effectively.
• Sound people management skills including the ability to handle delicate issues such as bereavement, complaints and conflict resolution.
• Strong customer service experience both internal stakeholder facing and external public facing.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build rapport with diverse stakeholders.
• Demonstrated proficiency in budget management.
• Independent work ethic with ability to self motivate and direct including ability to work on own initiative and prioritise workload.
• Ability to maintain confidentiality, and an understanding of GDPR principles.
• Has strong experience of ensuring that decisions are data-driven and evidence led.
• Is a committed team player and is used to collaborative working throughout the organisation.
• Good knowledge of humanist principles and practices.
• Professional experience of the wedding or funeral industries would be desirable but not essential.

Join our team and contribute to creating meaningful and memorable ceremonies that celebrate life and humanist values. If you're passionate about making a difference and thrive in a dynamic environment, we want to hear from you!

Changeworks has over 35 years’ experience in delivering high impact solutions for low-carbon living. We work collaboratively with partners, organisations and householders to drive transformation in energy efficiency and to tackle fuel poverty. An opportunity for a Senior Consultant has come up in our busy and growing consultancy team.

This role is based within our Consultancy Team and will report to the Principal Consultant. The team work across the sustainability agenda for internal and external clients. They specialise in energy efficiency, heat decarbonisation and renewables in the built environment, fuel poverty and pro-environmental behaviour change. As Senior Consultant you will grow Changeworks involvement in the low carbon energy transition, making a telling strategic contribution and developing and delivering related service, project and business opportunities.

You will develop and deliver services that build on building data analysis and incorporate best practice in energy efficiency retrofit, low carbon heat and wider energy systems to decarbonise homes. Identifying and developing business opportunities and securing work for Changeworks and the Consultancy team will be a key aspect of this role.

Using your project management skills you will manage the delivery of high quality services and projects. You will allocate work, lead, oversee, monitor and sign off on the work of the team. You will manage projects, ensuring they achieve their aims and objectives and are delivered on time and to budget.

You will have at least 3 years’ experience delivering in a relevant professional and/or project management role. Experience of working in a relevant environment is also essential (e.g. academic, business, technology or community).

You’ll be joining Changeworks at a very exciting time as we continue to drive forward our strategy to help us scale our work and achieve our ambitious goal of decarbonising homes across Scotland.

Changeworks is a great place to work. We hold Investors in People Platinum accreditation (something only a few organisations in Scotland have), and we were nominated for employer of the year by the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce this year. Our staff overwhelmingly would recommend us as an employer too.

The Climate Emergency has resulted in ambitious national targets to reduce carbon emissions from the built environment and reduce rates of fuel poverty. This has driven a significant increase in the number of pilot and large-scale interventions delivered by Changeworks and external organisations in this area. These include area-based domestic energy efficiency retrofit and decarbonisation projects and programmes.

We are a growing organisation, and this role is crucial to the delivery of our ambitious objectives. We want to decarbonise homes in Scotland on a massive scale, and that needs talented individuals like you to help us deliver on our objectives. You’ll receive full training plus coaching and mentoring.

We offer a wide range of staff benefits including flexible working, bike to work scheme, an excellent pension scheme and 26 days paid holiday plus 9 public holidays per year.

At Changeworks, we welcome and encourage applications from everyone.

Do you believe in the power of data to improve people’s lives and know that working with the public is vital to our mission? Research Data Scotland needs you!

We have an exciting opportunity to work in a multifaceted Business Management role to support the delivery of exemplary governance and operational excellence. This role works with stakeholders at every level in our organisation and as such we are looking to appoint a highly motivated and conscientious individual.

About us

Research Data Scotland (RDS) is a charity set up by the Scottish public sector and leading universities. We help researchers find and make use of data that can improve the lives of people in Scotland. Working in partnership, we do this by widening the range of data available, creating new data assets and providing a single point of contact for safe, secure and effective access to public data in a trustworthy manner.

Data is often locked away in lots of individual systems, across many different organisations, and isn’t in a format that makes access or integration easy. We can help researchers to unlock the potential of this data by giving them information and advice that speeds up and simplifies their work.

RDS aims to provide a step change in the service to researchers, whilst maintaining the high standards of information governance and data security already in place. We aim to work as openly as possible, maintaining standards in transparency and ethics. Our focus is on providing a streamlined service for researchers, as well as extending the range of data available through the service, particularly in the areas of Covid-19, NHS imaging, geospatial data, children and justice services.

Our partners include: Scottish Government, Public Health Scotland, National Records of Scotland (NRS), and the Universities of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow. We work closely with the national and regional safe havens. And we are in contact with other organisations in Scotland and across the UK in the data research sector, including public sector, research and commercial bodies.

About the job

The Business Manager will work closely with the Chair, CEO and Operations Director to manage, coordinate and schedule the regular cycle of our governance and business activities. This will include coordinating board meetings as well as maintaining our internal registers and ensuring our reporting mechanisms are top-notch! This post will be highly varied and vital to the successful delivery of our Business and Delivery plans.

There is a strong focus on developmental projects, operational risk, records management, governance, improving our performance and delivering our day-to-day charity operations. You’ll be an important member of our Operations Team, sharing your expertise with colleagues and board members, as well as independently leading on activities.

Reports to Operations Director

About you

You are a self-starter, with experience of working with stakeholders at every level. You’ll understand the importance of engaging well with board members, senior leaders and your colleagues to get their input into your work and support great governance. You are highly organised and thrive on managing multiple projects with different deadlines. You are keen to deliver, with an eye for detail and the pragmatism to understand our context and environment.

Life at RDS

We are a small friendly and highly engaged team of people. We promote continuous learning and work hard to build an inclusive and supportive workplace culture. We live our values of; integrity, transparency, courage, collaboration and humility.

Our people typically work a 35-hour week, with hybrid working on offer from day one. You can choose to work flexibly from home or use one of our desks in the Bayes Centre in central Edinburgh. The whole RDS team meets one day per month in-person in Edinburgh or at an off-site away day in the Central Belt. Individual teams organise their own in-person days to collaborate, develop and socialise together.

We offer 33 days’ annual leave (including public holidays) and have no set closure days. We have a generous pension and enhanced pay for parental/adoption leave. This list of benefits is being added to as the organisation develops, and you can help shape it as part of the team. Our Culture Group helps us seek feedback from colleagues across the organisation to make RDS an even better place to work.