Business Planning & Performance Specialist

Business Planning & Performance Specialist

Permanent. Full Time. Hybrid working. (You will be required to attend the office for a minimum of 2 days per week with the option to work remotely for the remaining 3 days).

Location: The role can be based in the following locations:

UK - Cardiff, Edinburgh, London, or Warrington

International - Abuja, Bogota, Dhaka, Nairobi, or New Delhi

Salary: Competitive

About us

Christian Aid exists to create a world where everyone can live a full life, free from poverty. We are a global movement of people, churches and local organisations who passionately champion dignity, equality and justice worldwide. We are the changemakers, the peacemakers, the mighty of heart.

We’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, and recognise the value this brings in forming strong, creative and high performing teams. We welcome applications from all sections of the community, and from those with experience from outside of the voluntary sector. And no, you don’t have to be Christian to work here – we encourage people of all faiths and none to apply. We just ask that everyone lives out our values of dignity, equality, justice and love. We value a good work-life balance, so we’re open to part-time and flexible working. We also offer hybrid working for our office-based colleagues and the option of being a homeworker for most of our roles too. 

Learn about our vision, mission and values

About the role

Reporting in to the Strategy & Performance Lead, the Business Planning & Performance Specialist will co-lead the corporate planning and reporting cycle, cascading the global strategy into annual corporate plans and OKRs, while fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement. 

The post-holder will partner with their assigned departments to support them to be high performing teams with business plans aligned to organisational values and goals, and together with the Strategy and Performance Lead and the Business Insights & Intelligence Analyst, they ensure alignment between departmental objectives, operational plans, measures of success and support high performance.

Some of the main responsibilities of the Business Planning & Performance Specialist will include:

• Support the Strategy and Performance Lead in setting and maintaining the strategic planning framework cascading strategy into business plans for all business units, enabling alignment with organisational values and goals.
• Co-lead the corporate planning and reporting cycle, shaping the corporate plan, defining OKRs and tracking progress against them, striving to maximise impact and maintain consistency.
• Collaborate with internal stakeholders to ensure quality engagement and consistency of approach.
• Active membership of the relevant departmental management teams to anchor and mainstream CA’s organisational strategy and corporate plan in both operational and strategic workstreams of the department.
• Lead and support the SMTs of IPE, Finance, and Governance departments and the Impact and Organisational Effectiveness departments to own and deliver trackable business plans that align with strategy. There are two roles supporting two departments each. The UK based role will support the IPE and FCG departments, the role based in Global or UK will support Impact and OE.
• Developing annual business plans and OKRs, ensuring alignment with corporate OKRS, budgeting and risk register ensuring they are coherent and consistent.
• Manage corporate performance tracking and reporting, ensuring accurate and timely updates to senior leaders, and key external stakeholders, including reporting through Christian Aid’s Annual Report & Accounts.
• Facilitate strategic decision-making, prioritisation, and tracking of performance against plans in the department, feeding back continuously to improve performance.
• Coordinate with senior leaders to enable the directorate and senior leadership team to access and engage with business plans and reports at a strategic level, to stimulate strategic thinking and help ensure accountability, deliverability and maximising impact.
• Actively champion a data culture and work closely with the Business Insights & Intelligence Analysts to embed data-driven decision-making.
• Promote a culture of continuous improvement within the organisation and develop and implement improvements to planning and performance processes in order to deliver high quality work and support collaboration across the organisation.

About you

Who we are looking for

Essential:

• Significant experience in developing and implementing strategies through operational plans and leading planning and performance processes in a complex organisation.
• Significant experience using a range of qualitative and quantitative data sources.
• Significant experience of working across departments, functions and leadership groups to agree goals and measure performance.
• Significant experience of producing global Annual Reports, Progress Reports, Results Reports or similar publications.
• Understanding of at least two of international programming/advocacy & policy, people management processes, finance and governance and fundraising.
• The ability to engage diverse internal audiences, including facilitating workshops and group meetings to ensure that corporate level processes are accessible, effective and understood by the users- fostering high ownership and accountability behaviours in teams.
• Understanding of budgeting, financial management practices, and the ability to integrate financial planning with business planning.
• Highly developed skills in business performance, planning and prioritisation with diverse functions.
• Detailed understanding of project management as a practical discipline.
• Highly developed problem-solving skills and the ability to find innovative and practical solutions.
• Highly Developed ability to negotiate with, influence and persuade others in a collaborative manner resulting in buy-in to changes in ways of working and behaviour 

Desirable:

• Highly developed communication skills and the ability to understand and translate complex information to a variety of audiences.
• Experience working in multicultural and diverse environments with a strong commitment to Christian Aid’s values and mission. 
• Experience of working in a dispersed team.
• Highly developed ability to think strategically and laterally, combining big picture thinking with practical application.

Further information

At Christian Aid we strive to be an inclusive and diverse employer and recognise the value that this brings in helping to build strong, creative and high performing teams.

We are actively encouraging racialised minorities, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, returning parents or carers who are re-entering work after a career break, people with caring responsibilities, people from low socioeconomic backgrounds, women, and older workers to apply. This is because these groups are under-represented within our teams, especially at senior level, and we recognise and value the contributions members of these groups make to strong, creative and high performing teams. 

We have a strong Christian ethos and we encourage applications from all faiths. Applicants will be expected to demonstrate an understanding of and sympathy with Christian Aid’s faith identity. 

All successful candidates will require a DBS/police check appropriate to the role and location and a Counter Terrorism Sanction check as part of your clearance for commencing your role with us. We also participate in the Inter Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme.  In line with this Scheme, we will request information as part of the referencing process from job applicants’ previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation when the applicant left employment. By submitting an application, the job applicant confirms their understanding of these recruitment procedures.

This role requires applicants to have the right to live and work in the country where this position is based and undertake the role that you have been offered. If you are successful and we make you an offer for the role, we will be required to conduct a right to work check on your immigration status in the UK. We will contact you regarding the documentation you will need to provide to evidence this. 

You can expect a wide range of rewards and benefits, please refer to the benefits booklet for your location to see our full list of employee benefits. 

For Salary details for this role, please refer to the Salary band by location.