About OPSS
Do you care about the safety of products and want to protect people and places? Can we use your skills, knowledge and experience to enable UK business to thrive? If the answer is yes, then we would like to hear from you!
We are the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS), part of the Department for Business & Trade. We are here for the purpose of making regulation work to deliver real world impact. Regulation is a powerful Government tool to address market failures, influence behaviour and promote positive action. Crafted and delivered well, regulation can be an enabler of growth, innovation and efficiency.
Since early 2018 we have been building a positive and creative team that enjoys a position of influence and respect within an organisation that continues to grow.
Our primary purpose is to protect people and places from product-related harm, ensuring consumers and businesses can buy and sell products with confidence
Further information can be found on our website here.
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles. We embrace diversity and promote equality of opportunity. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives and skills. There is a guaranteed interview scheme (DCS) for people with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
We are Inclusive
We are fully committed to being an inclusive employer and ensuring equal opportunities. We are keen to make our workforce as diverse as possible and recognise how important inclusivity is to achieve the best outcomes. We hope to attract applications from all underrepresented groups.
We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation if required to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform crucial job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.
The Role and Our Team
This role sits within the OPSS analysis team, an interdisciplinary and collaborative team, with over 40 social researchers, economists, statisticians and data scientists.
The team provides analytical support for all the Office’s activity, adding value by harnessing our profession-specific expertise. We have a strong commitment to learning and development, maintaining strong links within DBT and HMG, and are not afraid to try new and innovative approaches to deliver our objectives.
Are you passionate about using robust analysis to support the delivery of consumer and business benefits? This role provides a great opportunity to work alongside policy and regulatory colleagues to ensure that their work is delivering maximum impact.
OPSS’s commitment to monitoring and evaluation is set out in the OPSS monitoring and evaluation framework and we have been building up the internal capability to deliver against this framework. This role will be responsible for the delivery and strategic direction of monitoring and evaluation in OPSS, building on the work that has taken place over the last two years.
The role is based in a G6 Social Research team, consisting of 11 social researchers and will work closely with the other 30 analysts in our wider team. We have a strong commitment to collaborative working with other parts of OPSS, to ensure that we are delivering robust and useful analysis. We also have the joint head of profession for social research as our deputy director.
OPSS’s mix of regulatory activity, from policy to enforcement of regulations, makes OPSS an exciting and challenging place to work. OPSS has a strong commitment to development and puts a lot of effort into bringing roughly 500 OPSS colleagues together to learn and share information.
Key Responsibilities:
The role will be responsible for:
* Providing strategic and delivery leadership for monitoring and evaluation activity in OPSS. This will include:
o prioritisation of projects for scoping and delivery;
o leading the synthesis and communication of learning from monitoring and evaluation projects;
o activity managing 6 junior researchers who contribute to monitoring and evaluation development and delivery;
o engagement across OPSS, including at senior level boards, to provide progress updates and seek input to future monitoring and evaluation needs.
* line managing up to 3 junior researchers.
* contributing to the wider work of the social research team through working with specific policy or programme teams to provide wider research support as needed.
* engaging across the analysis team to build relationships, bring in support needed for monitoring and evaluation, and to contribute to wider analysis projects.
Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme
Disability Confident
About Disability Confident
A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that declares they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer. It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people. For more details please go to Disability Confident .