At a time of continued financial pressure on individuals and families across Scotland, this is your chance to help ease that burden by joining the Impact Team at Citizens Advice Scotland as our Policy Officer.

This role is unique, offering a varied policy portfolio gaining key knowledge and skills on areas including financial and digital exclusion, the poverty premium, vulnerability and affordability such as social tariffs and debt repayment.

The Financial Health team focuses on supporting citizens through the ongoing cost of living crisis, improving the debt landscape as well as people’s wider financial wellbeing. The Strong Communities team focus on supporting citizens gaining connectivity, access to justice and upholding human rights.

As Policy Officer across both these teams, you will play a key role in helping Citizen Advice Scotland influence political and policy change leading to better outcomes for the people across the country. This is a superb opportunity not only to make a difference for citizens but to also learn and grow your own policy and influencing skills from extremely experienced colleagues in the both the Strong Communities and Financial Health Teams, skills that will benefit you throughout your career.

Policy at CAS

Using our wealth of data generated by our bureaux, we develop evidence-based policy which is grounded in the experience of our clients. Using our knowledge of national policy, we engage policymakers across Parliament, Government (both central and local) and stakeholder organisations to influence change in policy, law and practice as well as to empower individuals and communities.

In this role, you will work closely with both Policy Managers on the following areas:

• Affordability and Connectivity– Seeking improvements in the external environment in light of data poverty and access to banking services as barriers to inclusion, both digitally and financially. This includes promoting affordable social tariffs on the market and making products and services affordable in the first instance to ensure accessibility for all.
• Vulnerability – Driving calls for change in support for consumers with vulnerable circumstances and ensuring good practice across all sectors through enshrined good consumer protection.

Both workplans for Strong Communities and Financial Health, represents a great opportunity for any policy officer, experienced or otherwise to develop, major policy positions in both spaces, developing key relationships across each sector separately and where they interlink, giving that these issues routinely go hand in hand.

Your focus will be to collaborate with external stakeholders and advocate for change at a national level. This will involve using your policy skills to represent CAS on relevant Government groups and develop excellent relationships within the CAB network, engaging with them in your work and utilising their experience to better inform policy.

The Citizens Advice Network in Scotland

Scotland’s Citizens Advice Network is the largest advice service in the country which empowers people in every corner of Scotland through our local bureaux and national services by providing free, confidential, impartial and independent advice. We use people’s real-life experiences to influence policy and drive positive change. We are on the side of people in Scotland who need help, and we change lives for the better.

The Citizens Advice network is made up of 59 local CABs, each its own independent charity, the Extra Help Unit, a group of specialist case workers dealing with energy advice, and Citizens Advice Scotland as the membership body itself. We provide advice across over 200 locations and deliver 12 national advice projects for UK and Scottish Government including the Money Talks advice service and the Help to Claim Universal Support advice service.

We believe that every citizen should have access to free, impartial and confidential advice that helps them make informed decisions, whenever they need it and however they choose to access it.

During 2022-23, the entire Citizens Advice Network helped over 187,000 individuals and unlocked £142 million for people through things like social security payments and employment entitlements. Our extensive footprint is important in helping us understand how issues impact locally and nationally across the county and the different impacts that policies can have in different areas.

Citizens Advice Scotland is committed to promoting diversity and inclusion. We offer a range of family friendly, inclusive employment policies and flexible working arrangements to support all our staff. We are also committed to equality of opportunity for all and applications from individuals are encouraged regardless of age, disability, sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief and marriage and civil partnerships.

Employee benefits

Citizens Advice Scotland offers excellent terms and conditions. We want our people to have a great work life balance and we have designed our working practices and benefits to support this. Here are some of things our employees benefit from: a 35-hour full time working week, 40 days annual leave, genuine flexibility in working hours with a flexi-time system, and hybrid working opportunities for every role. For more details of some of the other benefits on offer to our employees, please see the section on employee benefits in the job pack.

Citizens Advice Scotland is committed to promoting diversity and inclusion. We offer a range of family friendly, inclusive employment policies and flexible working arrangements to support all our staff. We are also committed to equality of opportunity for all and applications from individuals are encouraged regardless of age, disability, sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief and marriage and civil partnerships.

CAS provides options for hybrid working to allow employees to balance their time attending the office with time working from home. The number of days you will be able to work from home each week will be dependent on your job role and can be discussed as part of the recruitment process.

The post holder will be responsible for developing and delivering training courses/sessions to enable the EASE Project end users (AFTAR/CAB tenants of five partner Housing Associations, located throughout North Lanarkshire) to empower digitally excluded clients to claim online benefits, grants, offer IT sessions and employability sessions. The post- holder will have responsibility for planning group training sessions as well as one to one coaching sessions for the end users in their own home, or at community based venues or at partners’ premises. Learning will be evaluated through client user surveys and other feedback.

Owing to the flexible delivery nature of this project, a clean current driving licence and use of a car is required for this post.

Employee Benefits

• Competitive reward package including annual performance bonus scheme

• 5% employer pension contributions

• Generous holiday entitlement 38 days inclusive of public holidays

• Additional holidays for length of service

• Family friendly policies

• Home & Flexible working scheme

• Occupational Sick Pay

• Dedicated Training and Personal Development Budget as part of our Talent Management Pool

• Leadership Mentoring

• A wide range of Social Events and Team Building Days

We are looking for a HR Coordinator to work as part of the HR team and wider support services to provide a professional and customer focussed HR operational service across the colleague lifecycle in line with Scottish Wildlife Trust’s policies, procedures and values.

You will provide first level HR advice to managers and staff on all aspects of HR Management, Employment Law and the Trust's policies and procedures.

You will also be responsible for preparing payroll instructions for our outsourced payroll provider as well as liaising with our pension provider.

Qualifications / Essential Criteria

• Partially completed or working towards a CIPD qualification

Essential Experience

• Proven experience of working in a busy office in an HR environment, where the following experience will have been gained:
• Managing payroll, pensions and calculating staff entitlements and benefits
• Managing computerised HR database and other office systems and using them to collate and analyse data
• Providing quality first-level HR advice and knowing when to escalate
• Commitment to equal opportunities practice and behaviour

For more information please refer to the job description below.

If you would like more information please contact Elaine Burns, Head of HR and Support Services, eburns@scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk

About us

For nearly 60 years, the Scottish Wildlife Trust has worked with its members, partners and supporters in pursuit of its vision of healthy, resilient ecosystems across Scotland’s land and seas.

The Trust successfully champions the cause of wildlife through policy and campaigning work, demonstrates best practice through practical conservation and innovative partnerships, and inspires people to take positive action through its education and engagement activities. The Trust manages a network of around 120 wildlife reserves across Scotland and is a member of the UK-wide Wildlife Trusts movement.

The benefits

• Flexi time/Hybrid working
• Salary sacrifice Cycle to Work and pension schemes
• Weekly wellness hour
• Generous Sick pay allowance
• Enhanced maternity/paternity pay
• Training and Development focus

About the role

As Marketing Executive, you will use your expertise to coordinate and deliver marketing projects to increase brand awareness and drive engagement with key Shelter Scotland audiences. You’ll be integral to ensuring we have a critical mass of people providing their voice in support of our work, encouraging new and existing supporters to act to address the housing emergency in their communities.

You will help to ensure Shelter Scotland can deliver on its ambitious supporter strategy – to use mass-mobilisation to achieve supporter growth and depth to win campaigns and achieve long-term change. By creating integrated marketing campaigns across paid, earned, and owned channels – including email marketing – you will drive engagement with key Shelter Scotland campaigns and activities.

About you

We’re looking for someone with a passion for digital and email marketing. Shelter Scotland needs someone with a passion for the cause and can increase our reach to support our campaigns addressing the housing emergency.

Knowledge of integrated channel planning and paid social media is beneficial, and we want you to be confident using data to assess the impact of our marketing. For further details on the criteria, please see the ‘About You’ section of the Job Description.

Apply to be part of our team and be the change you want to see in society.

Benefits

We offer a wide range of benefits, including 30 days of annual leave, enhanced family friendly policies, pension and interest free travel loans. Our employees also have access to a tenancy deposit loan, payroll giving, cycle to work scheme and an employee assistance programme.

Shelter Scotland help thousands of people every year struggling with bad housing or homelessness through our advice, support and legal services. And we campaign to make sure that, one day, no one will have to turn to us for help. We’re here so no one has to fight bad housing or homelessness on their own.

We are happy to talk about flexible working, personal growth, and to promote a workplace where you can be yourself and achieve success based only on your merit.

About the team

Part of our Communications and Engagement team at Shelter Scotland, the Marketing and Engagement team includes a Supporter Mobilisation Manager, Senior Marketing and Brand Executive, Supporter Engagement Executive and Marketing Executive. The team work to deliver on Shelter Scotland’s ambitious strategy by leading targeted marketing activities to drive acquisition and engagement both locally and nationally.