Insights Officer

Insights Officer

Job Description and Person Specification

Job Title: Insights Officer

Salary: £31,500.

Contract Type: Full-time, 35 hours per week, although 4 days / flexible hours may be considered.

Working location: Remote. This post holder will be based at home, with office visits approximately once a month, and department/organisational away days which will be discussed with Line Manager. The role may involve some occasional irregular travel to visit schools, attend events and represent Magic Breakfast at meetings throughout the UK.

Reporting to: Evaluation Manager.

BACKGROUND

The latest research suggesting that the number of children and young people at risk of hunger has rocketed to 2.7 million* means that one in five children don't have enough to eat. When a child is too hungry to learn, when they’re aching for something to eat, they can’t concentrate. They can’t absorb information. Big feelings and worries can be impossible to control. They fall behind in their studies.

Magic Breakfast provide a nutritious and filling breakfast to over 200,000 children and young people every school day. We work with schools in areas of high disadvantage, helping staff target the children most in need without barrier or stigma. Magic Breakfast are ambitious to grow our impact to remove hunger as a barrier to learning for all children and young people in the UK.

The new UK government’s Children’s Wellbeing Bill outlined in the King’s Speech, includes a requirement for free school breakfast clubs in every English primary school. This is a fantastic start towards ending child morning hunger. Magic Breakfast’s influence will be instrumental to ensuring school breakfasts are introduced in a way that is hunger-focused and barrier free. In 2021, the Scottish Government, pledged a not yet enacted promise to provide breakfast to primary children.

Thousands of secondary school children are at risk of losing their free school breakfasts from September next year. For many of these students, this is their only opportunity to have a nutritious meal before facing a demanding school day, including taking exams.

Solutions across all UK nations are currently either not yet actioned or are severely underserving the current need. Being part of the work of Magic Breakfast is your chance, together with parents, teachers and people across the UK, to demonstrate the power of school breakfasts and to shape the way forward to end morning hunger for good.

*Food Foundation Insecurity Tracker Jan 2024

JOB PURPOSE

The newly formed Impact and Insights Team exist to provide research, insights and evidence; helping Magic Breakfast to achieve our mission of ending child morning hunger now and for good. The Insights Officer is an important role within the Impact and Insights Team, responsible for ensuring the organisation is kept up-to-date with the latest research and evidence, helping us to make evidence-informed decisions and enabling us to tackle child morning hunger now and for good.

As well as keeping up-to-date with external evidence, the Insights Officer will be an integral part of delivering research and evaluation projects for Magic Breakfast – cleaning and analysing data, creating accessible and engaging narratives, communicating to stakeholders, producing insights and recommendations, and developing ideas for future projects. Our ideal candidate for this role will have hands-on experience in social research, including experience of undertaking data analytics and producing visualisations.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

Support delivery of Magic Breakfast’s Research and Evaluation programmes

• Undertake both quantitative and qualitative data analysis for research and evaluation projects, including cleaning and manipulating large internal and external datasets.
• Design, administer and analyse surveys for different stakeholder audiences, including vulnerable groups and children and young people.
• Work collaboratively with colleagues to create engaging and accessible outputs from research and evaluation projects including written reports, infographics, interactive data visualisations, videos and more.
• Support the communication of research and evaluation by attending meetings and conferences, delivering presentations, reviewing external-facing outputs and supporting colleagues.

Facilitate Magic Breakfast’s insight and evidence activity

• Play a leading role in Magic Breakfast’s horizon scanning by identifying external research evidence that could support achievement of our vision and feeding insights back to the organisation.
• Ensure colleagues across the organisation can utilise research and evidence by making accessible insights and evidence digests based on internal and external research and evaluation findings.
• Use sector knowledge to help identify potential future research and evaluation projects for Magic Breakfast.
• Act as a first point of contact for colleagues and partners requiring support and input from the Impact and Insights Team, including fielding ad hoc requests.
• Working closely with our Fundraising Department to support our communication to existing and potential funders, including impact reporting and input into funding proposals.

Manage the internal communication of research and evidence

• Support increased usage and understanding by upskilling and empowering colleagues to utilise research and evaluation outputs in their work.
• Develop and lead a regular internal ‘speaker series’, inviting partners and colleagues from across the sector to communicate research and evidence to Magic Breakfast staff.

Other responsibilities:

• Adhering to all Magic Breakfast policies and procedures, with specific knowledge of GDPR and managing sensitive data.
• Act as an advocate across the organisation and externally for Magic Breakfast’s research and evaluation.
• Represent Magic Breakfast at appropriate events, meetings and committees.
• Keep professionally updated by undertaking CPD.
• Undertaking any other duties commensurate with the role.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

Skills and abilities

• Good analytical skills, including an ability to clean, manipulate, analyse and interpret complex data with excellent attention to detail.
• Ability to create engaging data visualisations that can tell the story of complex data is desirable.
• Good self-management skills, including an ability to prioritise, manage and deliver multiple projects simultaneously.
• High quality written and oral communication skills and an ability to communicate with ‘smart brevity’.
• Ability to communicate with stakeholders at all levels, including management and senior leadership.
• Proven ability to proactively work unsupervised and with initiative.
• Willingness to provide innovation and challenge to existing practices, helping to drive continuous improvement.

Knowledge and experience

• Degree level experience of social research (e.g. psychology, sociology, politics, economics); relevant professional qualification, or a track record of experience in a similar or related role.
• Proven experience of reviewing research literature, assessing the accuracy and validity of sources, and interpreting and digesting findings.
• Experience or ability to communicate effectively to different (often non-specialist) stakeholders, and an ability to translate highly complex findings into ‘plain English’ is essential.
• Experience of research and data analysis, with knowledge of how to synthesise and disseminate findings effectively.
• Experience of working within the education, poverty, food insecurity or similar sectors is desirable, but not essential.

Other

• Passion for Magic Breakfast’s mission of ensuring that no child is too hungry to learn.
• Shared commitment to our values and active contributor to our enabled and empowered culture.
• This role requires good communication skills and would best suit someone who is empathetic, positive, conscientious, inquisitive and loves to get things done whilst maintaining an enthusiastic manner and offering solutions, not problems.

APPLICATION PROCCESS

We reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a high volume of applications are received. This is to ensure that we can manage application levels whilst maintaining a positive candidate experience. Unfortunately, once a vacancy has closed, we are unable to consider further applications.

Should you have questions about the role before applying please email our People and Culture Team, recruitment @magicbreakfast. com

Close - 3rd November 2024

Shortlisting - 4th - 6th November 2024

Interview 1 - 12th all day / 14th Afternoon November 2024

Interview 2 and informal interview - 20th November