Programme Manager

YCN (You Can Now) is a learning and development partner to creatively driven organisations of all shapes and sizes — from foodie favourites like Pip & Nut and Dishoom to burgeoning tech companies like Dice and SuperAwesome; publishers like the Guardian and It's Nice That to amazing charities like Shelter and Action for Children.

We’re on a mission to enable others, and achieve that through motivating and memorable approaches that quickly build in-demand skills for the modern world of work.

The skills and topics we explore with our ever-growing community of partners range from creative thinking to remote collaboration; management and leadership to neurodiversity awareness. And a lot of the work we do is cross-organisational, creating wonderful ways for knowledge and experiences to be shared among diverse and curious groups.

We’ve an immediate opening for someone keen to work and learn within our close-knit central team as a Programme Manager; supporting the organisation and delivery of our learning and development programmes — both those delivered to groups from different organisations, and those taken directly into our partners' teams.

Most recently those kinds of programmes could include enabling groups of people-managers at the spectacles maestros Cubitts, supporting company wide exploration of expert-led perspectives on inclusion with KFC, building capacity within front-line community groups tackling youth violence in London or collaboratively kick-starting the thinking of cross-organisational cohorts of our super-popular First Time Leaders programme.

We’re beginning new programmes every week with an awesome line up of forward thinking partners, and as a Programme Manager you’ll be fundamental to the successful ongoing launch, delivery and learning capture on completion of multiple programmes like these.

Responsibilities will include:

— Being the key point of contact for all stakeholders across a programme; from client teams and programme participants to coaches, facilitators and your supportive YCN colleagues!

— Managing moving parts across various projects and programmes to ensure a seamless experience for participants and clients alike.

— Being present in key workshops, events and learning sessions (virtually and in-person) injecting energy and enabling our brilliant community of subject experts and associate coaches and facilitators.

— Ensuring that the magical behind-the-scenes systems are well-oiled and firing on all cylinders. We’re a small central team and so everyone takes responsibility for keeping information tidy, up to date and in a place where we can all benefit from it.

— Researching and liaising with potential subject experts and collaborators for new and existing programmes; setting them up for success by sharing insights and priorities.

— Leading pre-programme kick off sessions with partner teams to capture individual and collective learning goals, mapping the coming action to key values and objectives and sharing this back with other programme stakeholders.

— Supporting the follow up with programme participants in ways that motivate their further engagement.

— Preparing, designing and sharing reports with key clients in our partners' teams to show learner engagement, impact and feedback across programmes.

— Generally bringing ideas, energy and imagination to our day-to-day doings and embodying our values in ways that feel authentic to you.

— Continually sharing feedback with your colleagues, and pulling it in for your own continual learning.

— Prioritising your own development, both within our own programme and contexts and externally too.

Key strengths this role will help you play to and build:

— Facilitation

— Organisation

— Collaboration

— Research

— Communication

You:

— You’ll be motivated by the idea of enabling others, and bring an understanding and point of view on behaviour change and a curiosity for what makes people tick.

— You’ll enjoy the feeling of facilitating groups and experiences, of speaking to groups of people on screens and in rooms, sparking their imagination, introducing them to others, solving their challenges. You’ll delighting in joining the human dots.

— You’ll be a confident written communicator; able to distil and clearly articulate your ideas and those of others. Writing is a key way we communicate with our community; and from summarising a client kick-off meeting, to envisioning a coming programme experience or sharing follow on workshop notes with participants — you’ll be enabling others through good writing daily.

— You’ll be confident visualising ideas too, whether putting together tempting programme outlines, late changes to session slides or a really good looking one-pager that summarises our impact. We work with a mix of the usual tools like Miro, Figma, Keynote and Photoshop, and you’ll be willing to experiment and get going with new ones where there are gaps.

— You’ll be confident in managing expectations, agreeing budgets, timescales and other key points across projects; influencing where needed to enable win-win outcomes.

— You’ll be confident managing multiple programmes simultaneously, spotting where overlap enables efficiency and shared learning; helping us continually consolidate and codify our working.

— You’ll be comfortable mixing modes of independent deep work with the collective, creative and collaborative.

— You’ll have relevant, demonstrable past experience (we imagine at least 2-3 years) ; ideally in a learning and development, consultancy, agency or organisational design context. Ultimately if you think your past experiences and future goals fit with what’s outlined here then we’d love to hear from you.

A salary range of £28 — 32K has been shared, and experience and expectation will be considered — alongside benefits and a generous ongoing budget for personal development.

All of our team have access to our central working hub at 22 Bishopsgsate in London, combining teched-up space for work events and training, with brilliant views of the capital. More on our new space here: https://www.ycn.org/22. You’ll have the choice of home, hub or hybrid working throughout the week, and this role will require being able to attend in-person programme sessions across different UK locations, and sometimes overseas too.

This role could be either 4 or 5 days a week.

We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team and community; value different thinking styles and strengths, and are open to any adjustments to best support you in your time working with us.