Research and Insights Officer - The Guardian : Job Details

High profile local authority seeks a new team member to join the Strategy and Intelligence team. Offering a culture of openness, transparency, and integrity, where everyone has the opportunity to thrive and develop to be the very best, our client extends this ethos to ensure their residents, businesses and visitors are at the heart of decision making. The research and insights team are pivotal in discovering and creating insights to impact this vision and ambition across the whole organisation. From tackling climate change, regenerating retail strongholds, or integrating “smart” technology into residents’ homes to support social care delivery there are varied ongoing and ad hoc projects keep you busy as well as managing larger ongoing studies.

As a Research and Insight Officer, the post holder will have a specific focus on providing primary research and insights to the organisation. This includes:

· Producing excellent written and visual materials to disseminate insights (e.g., reports, presentations, maps, charts, and dashboards), and advising on the actions to follow from the findings to support decision-making.

· Providing audience insight, evidence, and project support to communications teams, to enable them to deliver impactful communications and campaigns.

· Undertaking high quality quantitative and qualitative research through the reviewing, analysing and preparation of raw data, documents, and other information for individual projects. This could range from developing surveys to designing discussion groups.

· Demonstrating a willingness to learn about different research methods and innovative tools.

· Developing knowledge across many service and policy areas to support teams across the council.

· Working closely with different teams to deliver our consultation objectives.

· Playing an active role in our university partnership work, helping to support academic projects.

Experience and Skills:

· Knowledge of quantitative and/or qualitative research methodologies, with several years of proven application within projects. This includes survey design, creation of discussion guides, facilitation of focus groups, statistical and/or thematic analysis, etc.

· Demonstrable experience of the research and consultation life cycles, gained from a social research agency, from defining objectives with clients, developing a suitable methodology, research design, analysis, visualisation, and storytelling.

· Project management experience.

· Excellent communication and presentation skills, and the ability to convey information to a variety of professional and lay audiences in an understandable and engaging format.

· Ability to question, verify and validate data, and demonstrate a relevant understanding of data governance, data management and data security.

· Seeing the big picture, appreciating societal contexts, and thinking strategically about problems and analytical approaches.

· Willingness to upskill and learn research techniques, applying new knowledge to projects.

· Ability to understand and take account of different objectives, legal issues, and political sensitivities when presenting results of analysis, without compromising analytical integrity

· Ability to negotiate and influence using evidence.

· Actively listen and ask questions to clarify tasks and understand research needs.

· Work effectively and proactively under pressure and to tight deadlines with good attention to detail and high standards of accuracy.

· Strong organisational skills, able to manage a diverse portfolio of work.

· Good interpersonal skills, and the ability to collaborate effectively with colleagues across a range of professions.

· Competent user of Microsoft Office specifically Word, PowerPoint, and advanced user of MS Excel. Knowledge of data visualisation tools (e.g., Power BI) statistical tools (e.g., R) and/or GIS desirable.

· Commitment to the promotion of equality, inclusivity, and respect