Position: Operations Director

Reports to: The Operations Director reports to the Managing Director and CEO.

Job Overview

The Operations Director contributes to the execution of the CEO’s vision and strategic objectives by managing the following operations processes:

• Knowledge management
• ICT
• Office management
• Business strategy and process
• Efficiency - enable and improve service-delivery
• Risk management

The Operations Director will work in concert with Includovate’s CEO and directors to develop and implement strategic plans to increase efficiency and effectiveness across the organisation. We are seeking an experienced director of operations who can balance big picture thinking while remaining across the details. As an ideal candidate, you are someone who can analyse data to identify problems and patterns and suggest strategic solutions. You bring a proven ability to streamline and implement new processes and systems that create efficiency and support rapidly shifting business demands. You enjoy developing solutions that push innovative boundaries.

Our ideal candidate is someone who can predict or anticipate some of the long-term challenges the business will face and can facilitate strategic planning sessions and bring issues to the CEO for discussion. Includovate uses Objectives and Key Results - OKRs - to drive business growth. Part of your role will be to collate, analyse and monitor OKRs.

Responsibilities and Duties

1. GOVERNANCE

• Promotes Includovate’s culture and vision through operations and business planning.
• Contributes to the development of corporate governance through risk management.
• Is across data security issues and artificial intelligence value-add.
• Passionate for developing processes and systems to improve functioning.

2. OPERATIONS

• Contributes to the development of Includovate’s business plan and key goals and ensures alignment with strategic vision.
• Monitors performance against business plan, encouraging ambitious performance and growth.
• Evaluates internal operations, and identifies areas for process improvement and/or capability gaps.
• Spearheads optimisation research to ensure the organisation is constantly evaluating best-options for software, infrastructure, etc.
• Analyses and interprets information and presents data and awareness raising for risk.

3. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND ICT

• Believes automation is key to staying up with the market
• Understands how the right software combination adds to business efficiency
• Gets excited by organising knowledge and making it easy to find/access

4. QUALITY ASSURANCE

• Contributes to the development and implementation of quality assurance processes and systems to drive client satisfaction and retention.
• Leads quality assurance activities to drive business efficiency.

Skills and Qualifications

• Degree qualified, with postgraduate qualifications preferred
• Proficiency in Google suite and experience using Monday.com would be beneficial
• Strong organisation, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills.
• Fluency in English. Fluency in other languages will be considered an advantage.
• Six Sigma Green Belt certification or equivalent qualification.
• Experience with organisational goal-setting systems, such as Objectives & Key Results (OKRs).
• Experience managing a team of 5 or more people.
• International development/poverty reduction experience preferred. Attitudes
• You listen well, instead of reacting fast, so you can better understand.
• You’re concise and articulate in your communications
• You learn eagerly and rapidly.
• You have a high level of interpersonal communication skills and can work in a fast-paced environment.
• You make wise decisions (people, technical, business and creative) despite ambiguity.
• You take smart risks.
• You are creative and curious.
• You are a democratic leader and reject command-and-control structures.
• You are a feminist.
• You believe in gender equality and equal opportunity.
• You have new ideas that prove useful.
• You have a thick skin and think of critical feedback as a growth opportunity.
• You are quick to admit mistakes and seek to learn from them.

Contract Duration and hours of work

A 12-month contract with 3-month probation period.

It is envisaged that this will be a full-time (40 hours per week) role.

Part-time hours could be negotiated with the right candidate. Flexible working arrangements apply, with some work falling outside core business hours to accommodate time zone differences.

Location

This is a remote home-based position. The successful candidate will need to provide their own computer and internet access.

To Apply

Follow the https://survey.sogosurvey.com/ … and complete the online application form by the 24th August 2021.

About Us

Includovate is about reducing inequality. Therefore, we encourage suitable candidates living with a disability and females to apply. We offer flexible working arrangements and part-time hours if needed.

Includovate is a research incubator that designs solutions for inequality and exclusion. Includovate believes in designing interventions and using research to reshape the social, political, economic and environmental systems that perpetuate injustice. Via the process of ‘systems change’, we focus on complex issues that affect the poor and excluded. We adopt an action-oriented approach to change mindsets and structural conditions that keep unequal systems in place. The result is bespoke and manageable innovations that lead to lasting gender equality and social inclusion.

We model our beliefs. We employ people living with a disability in our business, as researchers, employees, managers and advocates. We firmly believe that diversity is essential to ensure our solutions suit the maximum number of people. The more diverse the problem-solving process, the longer the solutions last. Includovate leads the way in using emerging methodologies and innovative practices.

As a social enterprise, Includovate invests some of its profits into independent research. It builds the capacity of local researchers to lead, publish and improve the quality of the research performed in low-income countries. Includovate employs southern researchers to lead the design of solutions and collaborates with international experts who contribute to methodological excellence and theoretical knowledge. By helping more researchers of the Global South publish, Includovate shifts the power balance of knowledge creation to those with less power.

Includovate believes in flat power and rejects autocratic and centralised structures that hinder participation, collaboration and open dialogue.