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Role Purpose

• To lead the development and delivery of Higher Education portfolio in Nigeria (including partnership work).
• This post will lead programmes/projects to a high standard and in compliance with British Council policies and procedures. It could also lead on specific components of large programmes. Acts as Senior Responsible Officer, if required, on programmes with an appropriate level of complexity and may manage large and geographically dispersed programme delivery teams.

Main accountabilities but not limited to the following:

Leadership & Management

• Lead the delivery of Innovation African Universities (IAU) programme in Nigeria (as part of Going Global Partnerships), International Student Mobility and Marketing, Insight and Engagement, Alumni UK, GREAT Study UK Campaign and any other HE programmes in the country.
• Could act as SRO on programmes or projects with some complexity and ambiguity.
• Leads large, diverse and geographically dispersed teams
• Builds capacity and capability in programme management in delivery teams.
• Champions Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) within the programme and empowers team members to effectively identify opportunities for mainstreaming EDI in the programme delivery.

Relationship & Stakeholders

• Responsible for relationships with partners/funders clients and internal stakeholders at a programme/project level.
• Holds delivery partners, team members and consultants to account including through effective supply chain management.
• Communicates on a variety of platforms about the programme or project.

Business Development

• Contributes to concept notes, proposals and bid documents as required, including partnership work in HE.
• Understands the market in which our programmes operate, plays a proactive role in co-ordination with other organisations/funders, spots opportunities and shares. intelligence about the market through appropriate channels

Commercial and Financial Management

• Monitors and reports on project life-cycle.
• Ensures sound internal/external financial management, planning and reporting is in place
• Oversight of Client invoicing process (if this is a contract).
• Ensure effective management of project profit and loss accounts.

Programme Management

• Ensures that programme/project is delivered according to all corporate (and where relevant, client) standards of quality and compliance (for example safeguarding, EDI, supply change management, social value and conflict sensitivity).
• Work with multiple colleagues to support design of results-based and impact-driven programmes and is responsible for planning and re-design as required
• Responsibility for managing all contractual obligations on programme or project
• Convenes risk meetings, updates risk register and either mitigates or escalates risk
• Manages procurement, grants management and due diligence on programmes
• Responsible for project/programme management reporting

Role specific knowledge and experience:

Essential requirements:

•  Project management or equivalent qualification
• Extensive experience (more than 5 years) of leading and managing programmes or large projects.
• Experience of managing multi country or large programmes that have met project closure standards and passed audits.
• Experience of working with several different funding sources and knowledge of different programme frameworks and compliance rules.
• Experience of working within a consortium arrangement or with other funding partners or sponsors and management of associated contracts.
• Extensive experience of managing complex, senior, client, stakeholder and partner relationships and reporting requirements.
• Experience of identifying risk, mitigating risk and monitoring risk and reporting risk through appropriate channels.
• Experience of developing MEL frrameworks and designing data collection mechanisms
• Experience of leading a large, diverse, dispersed project or programme team
• Experience of presenting and communicating programme success to a range of external audiences
• Significant understanding and experience in Higher Education in Nigeria

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About the role:

• The Organisational Development Lead role is a new role for us in the British Council.  The role will drive delivery of key initiatives across our businesses, addressing the biggest talent and organisational challenges, using enterprise frameworks developed by the People Experience teams to activate our Employee Value Proposition and desired culture.
• Appointed candidate will consult on and lead a variety of projects, sometimes simultaneously, spanning multiple People specialisms and business areas addressing the biggest talent and organisational development priorities. By applying design thinking, project delivery methodologies, People function subject matter and change management expertise they create sustainable impact.
• The British Council has recently undertaken a significant Transformation programme across all areas of the business, with departments across the organisation at varying stages of maturity in implementing and embedding their new operating models.
• The Talent and Organisational Development team (T&OD) exists to bring focus to the development of our people and organisation, partnering with leadership teams to build the diversity, future skills, capabilities, and ways of working we need so that we continue to renew and strengthen our global impact. It also has a significant role in the activation of our EVP (Employee Value Proposition) and in influencing our culture and the experience of working within the British Council through the work with leadership teams and colleagues in other People teams.
• The Organisational Development Lead works within a team of peers as part of the Organisational Development Practice team, consulting with People business partners, CoEs and organisation stakeholders to design and deliver solutions. This is a flexible and dynamic team, which can be deployed to projects based on the talent and organisation development challenges and opportunities that arise in the business. Members of the team work directly with People business partners, business leaders and CoE teams to hypothesize, test and build solutions to talent and organisation challenges and opportunities, using project management methodology and taking an agile approach. As a flexible pool, the team helps the People team to achieve goals of agility, customer centricity and operational efficiency.

What we require of the successful candidate: 

• Please see below a summary of the knowledge and skills required for this role however for the detailed role profile, providing a more in depth understanding of all the role entails, please send an email to vanessa.reynolds@britishcouncil.org 

Language Requirements

• The British Council systems and global processes operate in English. Written and verbal proficiency in English is required.

Education and Qualifications

• University degree or equivalent professional experience
• Organisational development or design qualification / certification (desirable)
• Agile trained (desirable)
• Formal project management qualification (desirable)

Role specific knowledge and experience:

• Experience in delivering projects or initiatives within a People function environment.
• Knowledge of and experience using project management methodologies
• Design thinking knowledge and experience
• Experience of modern project management methodologies (desirable)
• Experience of consultancy within People function disciplines (desirable)
• Knowledge of user-experience design (desirable)

Role Specific Skills

Data Literacy

• Data Driven - Grasps and uses data to make decisions and inform practice (developing).

Business Acumen

• Customer Understanding - Understands customer needs and applies user-centric principles (developing).

Digital Agility

• Digital Adoption - Creates an environment ready for digital adoption (developing).
• Technology Empowered - Integrates tech to build efficient, scalable, & impactful HR solutions (Novice).

People Advocacy

• Change Navigation - Builds the change structures and capacity to promote change and resilience (developing).

Execution Excellence

• Action Orientation - Implements actionable and adaptive plans to achieve results (developing).
• Interpersonal Skills - Achieves shared goals using effective interpersonal skills (developing).
• Culture and Wellbeing- Shapes inclusive performance culture prioritizing wellbeing (developing).