Research, Insight & Evaluation Lead - Belfast
15 hours ago
Belfast
About the job Job summary Discover a career in your hands at HMRC. Whether you're seeking purpose, growth, or a workplace that gives you a true sense of belonging, hear from some of our employees as they share their story about what it's really like to work at HMRC. Visit our YouTube channel to watch the full series and come and discover your potential. Are you passionate about understanding audience behaviour and evaluating the impact of evidence-based government communications? We're looking for an expert Research, Insight and Evaluation Lead to play a pivotal role in the delivery of our Communications Strategy, as we support HMRC in its transformation and help collect more of the money that powers our public services. This is an exciting time to join us as we improve how we develop impactful, evidence-based government communications. Your role will be to help shape our newly formed Communications Insight, Impact and Digital Solutions team, which brings together new and existing teams of specialists to transform our approach. You will play a key part in setting our insight and evaluation strategy and enabling robust identification, tracking and evaluation of communications impact. Job description You will lead a small team to deliver a programme of communications research - both quantitative and qualitative - including creative and message testing, campaign and brand tracking research, as well as representing HMRC's communications interests as a stakeholder in research projects owned by other parts of the department. You will provide expert insight and evaluation advice and support for priority external and internal communications campaigns, drawing on HMRC's own sources and those across and outside of government. As a team, you will use these projects to develop a deep understanding of our internal and external audiences, communications channels, and reputation as a department. You will work closely with colleagues to agree priority areas for deeper analysis. You will lead your team in using this deep understanding to advocate for the use of customer-focussed insight within communications strategies and plans, influencing stakeholders, providing clear and accessible products that help shape strategic communications strategies and plans. You will act as custodian of key reputation evidence sources, ensuring that the narrative around the findings is clearly articulated and provides actionable insights for our teams, supports the development of our strategic plans, informs SMART communications objectives, evaluates campaign performance and drives continuous improvement. Your work will span campaign evaluation at a strategic level and your team will work closely with campaign leads who evaluate their campaigns in flight. You will support the setting of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for HMRC's Communications Strategy and Annual Plans, reporting on progress against these on a regular basis, and drive the research needed to measure communications performance against these KPIs. Person specification You will: • Develop and deliver through your team a programme of qualitative and quantitative research that meets the evidence needs of HMRC's Communications function, providing strategic and audience specific insight, advice on appropriate research vehicles to support communications planning, and evaluation metrics for our communications strategies, plans, campaigns and activities., • Work with stakeholders to draft research briefs that articulate research objectives and target audiences, and draft business cases and briefings for research planning rounds., • Work with partner agencies to scope, design and implement fieldwork and ensure that outputs are clear, succinct and meet business objectives., • Support communications colleagues in setting SMART objectives and developing metrics, baselines/benchmarks and KPIs to evaluate communications campaigns and activities and demonstrate communications' impact, • Develop a rigorous process for future evaluation including agreements on integration of campaign deflection costs and return on investment (ROI); and to plan, track and report against the objectives set out in HMRC's communications strategy and annual plans., • Assess the landscape into which our communications are landing, track HMRC's reputation, and provide actionable insights in collaboration with other research owners to help inform communications priorities, evaluation measures and KPIs., • Oversee delivery of the quarterly communications reporting hub, and the drafting of responses to enterprise level reporting commissions, with support from colleagues across the team., • Champion the new Communications Information Management System (CIMS), and integrate insight and evaluation products and tools, such as a new insight library and audience segmentation database, to CIMS to support campaign planning and track impact., • Expertise in commissioning and leading research projects, including procuring and managing external agencies, overseeing tendering, setting up contracts, onboarding agencies and managing suppliers., • Expert understanding of a range of research methodologies, including both qualitative and quantitative approaches, and their application in evaluating communications, policy, or public service delivery., • Strong analytical skills and ability to synthesise and draw conclusions from a range of evidence sources, turn these into actionable insight, and present these conclusions clearly and persuasively., • Excellent stakeholder management skills, with experience of working with, advising and influencing a range of stakeholders, including advising and influencing senior leaders., • Strong understanding of SMART objective setting and evaluation processes, including setting KPIs, • Experience in communications/campaign or project/programme evaluation, performance reporting, and an understanding of ROI modelling., • Degree or equivalent experience in market research, social research, or a related field., • Membership/accreditation of Market Research Society., • Membership of the Government Social Research (GSR) professional body for social researchers working in government., • Seeing the Big Picture, • Communicating and Influencing, • Leadership, • Pension - We make contributions to our colleagues' Alpha pension equal to at least 28.97% of their salary., • Family friendly policies., • Personal support., • A name-blind CV including your job history, qualifications and previous experiences., • UK nationals, • nationals of the Republic of Ireland, • nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK, • nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window), • nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS), • individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020