Are you passionate about driving systemic change for small-scale producers and enterprises? This new role is a great opportunity for someone with a solid understanding of sustainability standards and experience delivering projects and managing learning, innovation and collaboration processes with diverse stakeholders. Over the next few years, ISEAL will be leading an ambitious body of work focused on improving conditions for small-scale producers and enterprises to earn a living income and implement sustainable land management and production practices. The manager will be working closely with sustainability systems and their partners to advance mechanisms and strategies to support small-scale producers and SMEs within and outside international supply chains. 

The position will play a key role in managing and implementing activities across a range of ISEAL projects. The manager will support international discourse on living incomes and farmer livelihood strategies as part of the ISEAL team leading the Living Income Community of Practice and will help drive innovation, supporting grant-making through the ISEAL Innovations Fund.

Working closely with the senior project leads, the manager will have responsibilities for planning, coordinating and delivering project activities that advance action within the ISEAL Community, working with external experts and government, NGO and business partners as needed.  Project activities will range from background research and the development of guidance and insight, to planning and facilitating dialogues and shared learning events, to leading collaborative initiatives and developing partnerships.

The ideal candidate will have a strong working knowledge of the challenges that smallhodlers and SMEs face in accessing and deriving benefit through supply chains and of the linkages between livelihood improvement strategies and environmental objectives, such as reduced deforestation. We are looking for someone with the convening, partnership building and facilitation experience to successfully engage ISEAL mebers and external partners in a journey of learning, innovation and collabortion, navigating any bumps along the way. Expeirence working with small-scale producers or international supply chain actions, and/or applying the concept of living income, will be an added benefit to this role.

The key responsibilities we will entrust you with:

Project delivery

• Support senior managers with designing and planning projects and project activities
• Lead on (adaptive) project management and implementation to make sure activities progress in a timely, coordinated manner, resulting in high quality outputs and experiences for participants
• Contribute to project reporting including tracking data for project KPIs and writing donor reports
• Lead on project communications, including writing blogs and public speaking, coordinating with the Communications team on communications and messaging strategies and plans
• Keep other ISEAL projects and colleagues informed about project work, identify and build synergies with other workstreams

Convening, event and dialogue organisation

• Lead multi-stakeholder collaboration to advance and scale promising innovative solutions
• Design and implement collaborative learning journeys with ISEAL members, exploring challenges and building collective understanding of solutions
• Develop and deliver webinars and peer learning sessions (virtually and in person)

Research, analysis, synthesis, and writing

• Carry out background research through stakeholder interviews, peer learning workshops and meetings, and literature and document review, synthesizing key points and lessons in an accessible way
• Produce technical documents, guidance notes, white papers, and simplified communications and tools
• Support ISEAL’s Innovations Fund by serving as a technical expert for projects related to own area of work and helping to consolidate and synthesize lessons learned across grants

General

• Represent ISEAL at external events and in stakeholder relationships
• Line manage direct reports, providing guidance and direction and encouraging growth and development
• Manage work of other staff on own projects, coordinating workload with their respective line managers

Essential experience, knowledge and attributes

• Educated to degree level in a relevant subject and/or equivalent professional experience in related field (International Development, Sociology, Anthropology, Human Geography, Economics etc.)
• Practical experience in working with topics of small-scale producers and SMEs, farmer livelihoods and income, equity and empowerment, particularly in context of how markets and supply chains work
• Familiarity with sustainability standards or similar systems and/or work of ISEAL Community Members
• Track record in developing and delivering collaborative initiatives, learning journeys, workshops, webinars and peer group meetings
• Proven project coordination/management skills, ideally in a grant funded environment, including donor reporting, working across multiple projects and communicating/liaising with different project leads
• Strong analytical skills and ability to synthesise information clearly
• Strong interpersonal skills with track record of building and maintaining strong relationships with stakeholders, members, or partner organisations
• Excellent written and spoken English and confidence in communications with peers and external partners
• Ability to communicate and work effectively with cross-functional teams in a fully remote, international environment, including regular international time-zone calls
• Experience supervising and managing others in projects and/or as line reports

Additionally desirable

• Partnerships and networks in the livelihoods and equity space
• Experience in working directly with small-scale producers or SMEs, or producers at local level and in global south

About ISEAL

ISEAL supports ambitious sustainability systems and their partners to tackle the world’s most pressing sustainability challenges – from the climate emergency and biodiversity crisis to human rights and persistent poverty. ISEAL Community Members include many of the most respected sustainability schemes worldwide and are active across a diverse range of sectors. Read more about us on our website iseal.org. 

ISEAL´s culture and how we will help you thrive

Our values are Connection, Empowerment, Inspiration, Wellbeing, Effective Working and Creativity.

These are traits we value in each other and in the organisation overall and we instil these in all our processes and interactions.

The issues we work on are of a global nature and our team reflects this, with individuals from many different backgrounds and nationalities. We know this diversity adds to the high quality of work we deliver as an organisation and through our commitment to diversity and inclusion we want to add strengths and perspectives in our team with each recruitment. Diversity for us includes race and gender identity, age, disability status, sexual orientation, religion and many other areas forming part of someone´s identity. We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer.

As an organisation, we also support our people in their personal and professional development, with specific budgets and processes enabling individuals to take advantage of growth and development opportunities.

We offer 25 days of annual leave, to which we will add a day a year after 2 years (to a maximum of 30 days), as well as an extra five days as a one off once you have been with us for a full five years.

We recognise individuals’ preferences when it comes to where and when to work through a hybrid working model with a minimum of 4 days per month in the London office as well as the opportunity to apply for flexible working arrangements to suit individual´s needs.

Other relevant information

Term: This is an initial contract of one year with the possibility of extension

Salary:   £52,000-58,000 p.a. depending on experience (full time, 37.5 hours per week)

Location: London is the preferred location. Applicants will need to provide evidence that they are entitled to work in the UK. An ability and willingness to work in a hybrid work environment is required. For exceptional candidates, we may consider alternative locations, particularly in Belgium or Netherlands, or cross border workers in these locations.

International travel: The post holder will be required to undertake some international travel

Click to apply

Specific enquiries about this role and the application process can be sent to the recruitment@isealalliance.org.

Deadline for applications is 12 March 2024, 5pm GMT.

Please note that we will only contact shortlisted applicants.