About this role
Associate Director
In a nutshell
Yonder is the Insight and Transformation Company. Our purpose to deliver confidence to clients in decisions that matter, through unifying the breadth of our capabilities across the business. This includes our insight practice: as our clients continue to face challenging operating contexts, constrained budgets and constant technological change, our mission is to provide complete decision intelligence for absolute conviction. We support our clients right throughout the decision-making process by a combination of high-quality data, elite data science and high value insight, and our use of cutting edge technology to enhance and empower our human traits.
We are looking for an experienced and commercially minded Associate Director (AD) to work with us in our Public and Social Insights Unit working across a range of government departments, councils, charities, regulators, and industry bodies. If you are an Associate Director or equivalent with an established track record of delivering public and social research then we would like to hear from you.
Your skills & experience
You have been delivering for clients in a strategic, analytical, or research capacity for at least 5-6 years, with a focus on helping them understand their audiences and their operating environment, and helping them make better decisions – particularly relating to public policy, regulation, and communications. You bring strong experience in both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies.
You have a broad range of interests, are passionate about public sector research and ensuring you’re your work has a real-world impact on people and society. You demonstrate outstanding storytelling, written and verbal skills, can be trusted to manage projects independently, and have excellent attention to detail. You have experience of leading client relationships and are confident in a client facing role. You have a solid track record of successful new business development from existing and new clients. You have strong experience of public sector procurement and rules, experience writing public sector tenders, and a clear understanding of how to propose and deliver social value. You can creatively apply a range of data and intelligence to public sector challenges and use your initiative to grow, develop and learn. You have experience of managing less experienced team members.
The role
You will lead the day-to-day management of projects with government departments, councils, charities, regulators, and industry bodies, thinking creatively to determine the best approach for addressing client challenges. You will analyse qualitative and quantitative data as well as other sources of market intelligence to help advise our clients at a strategic level. These projects may utilise public opinion, stakeholder opinion, digital intelligence data, demographic analysis, or other forms of data. You will be responsible for producing intelligent and actionable insights through story-telling and data visualisation with a strong understanding of communications strategy. Strong understanding of campaign evaluation is required and experience delivering consultations and evaluation work is desirable.
You will use a range of research and consulting techniques to find answers to our clients’ questions or solve their problems, such as ‘how can I understand and respond to wider political / social / commercial trends?’, ‘how can I best achieve a policy objective?’, ‘how can I prevent a specific audience from experiencing harm?, ‘how can I deliver effective public communications strategy?’ or ‘how can I better engage with my key stakeholders?’.
It is essential that you are able to take the lead in managing projects, taking responsibility for delivering client work to the highest standard. You will lead in designing and conducting these projects, thinking creatively to determine the best approach for addressing client challenges and then managing colleagues and suppliers (where relevant) to produce final reports, presentations and recommendations for the client. You will likely be managing less experienced team members, and will be required to oversee and manage their work, giving feedback that helps them improve. You will also have some interest in developing thought leadership to support engagement with public sector clients.
What Yonder can offer you
Yonder has a real buzz as we continue to grow. We reward people who help to drive that growth, and the company supports and encourages new ideas which will add value. We offer a competitive salary, 28 days holiday (plus your birthday day off!), a 5% employer pension contribution, life assurance and other benefits like volunteering leave, flexible working and 4pm finishes on Fridays etc.
As we operate a hybrid working model, there will be an expectation to work from our London office two days a week.
Our Values and behaviours
We Focus
• Engage / Express with clarity / Take a view / Be pragmatic
We Go Further
• Challenge the thinking / Be brave (backed by evidence) / Work at the edge/ Celebrate imagination
We Pursue Brilliance
• Discover what matters / Be a yardstick / Show professional integrity / Bring the energy
We’re In It Together
• Connect with authenticity / Be open / Lift yourself by lifting others / Muck in
Competitive