Impacts & Research Manager

Role summary

ISEAL Alliance is seeking an experienced Impacts and Research Manager to join its Impacts team. ISEAL is the global membership association for sustainability standards that includes many of the leading eco-labelling and certification schemes in the world as its members, such as Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance, Marine Stewardship Council, Forest Stewardship Council, Better Cotton Initiative, and others. ISEAL's work is driven by our mission to strengthen sustainability standards systems for the benefit of people and the environment.  Please find out more about us on our website isealalliance[dot]org.

The ISEAL’s Impacts team works to develop evidence on the impacts and performance of standard systems in order to drive learning and improvement within standard systems and help businesses better understand the business and impacts case for using and applying credible sustainability standards.  The team is currently made up of two positions, with two new roles added in 2015 to increase the team’s scope and breadth of programmes.

The new role of Impacts & Research Manager will be responsible for developing and then managing a new programme of proactive outreach to and collaboration with the research community, with the goal of generating high quality research that responds to the needs and interests of the ISEAL community.  The Impacts & Research Manager will also deliver additional monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning projects in collaboration with ISEAL member organisations, and ISEAL partner organisations.  

We seek a Manager with substantial experience in developing, managing and delivering research-based and monitoring and evaluation projects.  The ideal candidate will be familiar with social and environmental standards and will be inspired by ISEAL’s approach to collaboration and shared learning within the standards’ community. The role requires strong knowledge of research design, performance monitoring, impact evaluation, and/or social and environmental research methodologies. It suits someone with an aptitude for developing, facilitating and inspiring collaborations and partnerships in the pursuit of furthering research that is both ground-breaking and directly relevant to standard systems and their key stakeholders.

Responsibilities:

Planning, Strategy, and Project Implementation

• Contribute to development of overall strategy & workplan for the ISEAL Impacts programme
• Lead in the development of the strategy and workplan for specific aspects of the ISEAL impacts strategy, including but not limited to our engagement with the research community
• Support Senior M&E Manager in project and grant proposal development
• Manage projects and/or project elements to ensure desired results, including coordination, management and supervision of consultants and researchers, of internal ISEAL teams, and/or of mixed teams of ISEAL staff and ISEAL member staff, as needed and relevant
• Manage budgets and budget reforecasts, and prepare and negotiate contracts, terms of reference, and partnership agreements
• Provide project-related supervision and coaching of coordinators to develop capacities & ensure delivery

Research and Research Community

• Develop a programme of interactions with the research community aimed at generating high quality research that responds to the needs & interests of the ISEAL community.
• Convene groups of ISEAL members, ISEAL partners, and standard system stakeholders to develop research agendas to determine research priorities
• Manage and respond to, or appropriately refer enquiries by researchers
• Design and conduct or commission a small number of research activities or studies (likely systematic reviews, meta-analysis, or collective analysis of data from multiple organisations)
• Develop and implement an approach to tracking emerging research results and keeping ISEAL staff and members appraised
• Work with the ISEAL’s communications team to synthesize and accurately communicate results of new research studies to the ISEAL community and interested stakeholders

ISEAL Learning Community

• Translate lessons from the work with the research community and on research studies into useful technical guidance, tools, and advice for M&E staff in ISEAL member organisations
• Support ISEAL Impacts team in providing individual and collective support to ISEAL member organisations to implement the Code
• Organise and deliver conference sessions,  community webinars, and M&E peer learning group sessions related to work of the Impacts team

Monitoring & Evaluation

• Provide technical advice on and implement selected organisational and project-specific M&E activities, to help measure effectiveness and encourage learning and improvement within ISEAL

External engagement

• Represent ISEAL and the ISEAL impacts programme in external fora and through stewardship and development of key partnerships and relationships

Other

• Keep colleagues appraised of developments in own area and encourage within- and cross-team collaboration, coordination, and learning
• Contribute content, views and suggestions to team and staff meetings and other internal meetings
• Fulfil requirements of internal staff management processes including performance reviews, supervisory meetings, work planning etc
• Commit to continuously increase own knowledge and understanding of ISEAL’s work and that of its members, and of the wider context of voluntary standards and sustainability issues