Director - Work, Financial and Consumer Behaviour in London

We are seeking a highly motivated and client-focused Director to lead the strategic development and operational execution of our Work, Financial and Consumer team (internally known as ‘EPIC’). This role offers a unique opportunity to shape the future of our consulting and thought leadership offerings, expand our market reach, and ensure the delivery of exceptional research and client projects.

The scope of the team is broad and ambitious:

• Work & productivity: including Labour Market Inactivity, employment practices (de-biasing recruitment & retention, diversity and inclusion, wellbeing, employee engagement), Health & Safety at work.
• Financial behaviours: including pensions, scams, gambling, risk-taking behaviours within banks.
• Consumer, business and digital regulation: including organisational behaviour, business productivity.

Our clients range from central government departments, local government innovation, financial institutions, regulators, and multi-national employers. The core theme through all our work is the application of Behavioural Science principles to deliver targeted policy outcomes, and the use of empirical methods to test and iterate to understand what works.

Key Responsibilities:

• Client Engagement & Sales Drive: Lead efforts to drive sales from new and existing clients across the public, private and charity sector, collaborating closely with the comms/marketing teams. Promote BIT offerings to target clients, develop compelling value propositions, fostering strategic relationships, and lead client acquisition efforts for the team. Lead proposals and presentations for potential clients, showcasing the expertise and value of BIT.
• Behavioural Science and strategic thinking: Bring deep understanding of Behavioural Science (in one or more of the sectors/ segments listed above). Strive to represent BIT as a leader in our field of Behavioural Science for public good. Create opportunities to share our findings (where confidentiality and client permissions allow). Expand our public profile as the ‘go to’ consultancy for innovative and robust Behavioural Science thinking in the target sectors.
• Delivery Excellence: Oversee the end-to-end design, delivery, and dissemination of client projects to high quality standards, using appropriate frameworks, tools and robust and ethical research methods. Maintain and champion our robust quality assurance processes for all project work.
• Financial and people management: Inspire and manage the team to deliver excellence, considering talent profile, recruitment, personal development and progression for team members. Manage the P&L for the team, working with the established systems and processes, while considering the pricing of projects, resourcing structures and contractual requirements. Collaborate with our group functions (including Finance and HR) to operate effectively within the BIT group.

Required Skills and Experience:

• Proven experience (typically 7+ years) in the Behavioural Science sector; deep understanding of the behavioural science literature and practice in one or more of the segments/ sectors listed above.
• Engaging communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence and network effectively with clients and prospects.
• Team leadership skills to motivate and inspire, as well as ensure on-time delivery and high quality work outputs.
• A track record of managing projects and budgets successfully, with strong organisational and problem-solving abilities.
• Commercial acumen with an understanding of sales and delivery of client projects; understanding of commercial contracting and managing aspects of commercial risks throughout the project lifecycle.
• Residency in the UK with the right to work, and ability to be in the office 2 days per week.

Desirable Skills and Experience:

• Formal qualification in Behavioural Science, Social Science, Economics or similar.

What We Offer:

• Work with amazing clients across the private and public sectors, focused on delivering social impact across a wide range of public policy issues from energy and climate change, health and wellbeing, education, work and employment.
• The opportunity to lead and shape a key strategic area of the BIT business and scale our social impact.
• A dynamic, collaborative and supportive work environment, with flexible working, and collaboration opportunities with the charity, Nesta (BIT’s parent organisation).
• Bonus scheme.
• Generous pension scheme with 7% employer contribution.
• A flexible benefit pot of £1,100 to spend on our flexible benefits programme which currently includes things like the ability to buy extra annual leave at the start of the year, gym membership, cycle to work scheme etc or just take as cash.
• Interest free season ticket loans.
• 25 days of annual leave (in addition to public holidays) for full-time employees, rising to 27 days after 2 years continuous service.
• Enhanced parental leave payments.
• Encouragement of flexible working and a culture which enables this; for example flexible start and finish times and an IT set up which allows for easy working from home options.
• Regular team lunches with inspirational guest speakers.
• A variety of interest groups including Film Club, BIT Kids for our parents & 5-a-side team.
• A great office, which has a fabulous roof terrace overlooking the Thames river, an amazing coffee machine, free fruit, pastries and fridges stocked full of soft drinks!

Important notes:

• Right to Work in the UK: You will need to already have the right to work in the UK in order to be able to undertake this role. We will ask all applicants to provide evidence of their right to work during the recruitment process.
• Privacy and data protection: The personal data you provide to Applied when you apply for a role with The Behavioural Insights Team will be passed on to The Behavioural Insights Team for the purposes of reviewing your application, inviting you for interview, and/or offering you a job and getting you set up as an employee/contractor. For full details on how BIT collects and uses your personal data please visit our website.