Placement Team Support (Chief Operating Office - Remote)
The British Red Cross is a volunteer-led humanitarian organisation that helps people in crisis, whoever and wherever they are. We enable vulnerable people at home and overseas to prepare for and respond to emergencies in their own communities. And when the crisis is over, we help people recover and move on with their lives.
Placement Volunteers at the British Red Cross are highly valued for the skills and energy they bring. We aim to provide our placement volunteers with an insight into the daily workings of the world’s largest humanitarian organisation. The successful candidate will have access to relevant in-house training and development opportunities during their placement. There may be some ad hoc opportunities to get involved in other areas of activity.
Our placement volunteers will help make a great contribution to the work of the British Red Cross and will be responsible for achieving specific agreed objectives within one of our various departments.
The expected start date for the placement is 1 May 2025 and the placement will run for a period of 12 weeks over 3 days each week.
Your role as a placement volunteer will help make a great contribution to the work of the British Red Cross. You will take responsibility for achieving specific objectives that are agreed with you within one of the various departments across the UK. You will have a real responsibility and place in the department, bringing some of your skills and experience to the role; you will also have the chance to develop workplace skills.
While we don’t offer voluntary internships, we are happy for you to describe yourself as an intern on your CV, if you feel that would be helpful.
The Chief Operating Office (COO) is the core business support and enablement function of the Internal Services Directorate (ISD). We collaborate with the COO and the ISD Directorate Management Team (DMT) to ensure ISD operates smoothly and efficiently. This entails offering daily advice and support to the COO and ISD DMT. We work closely to ensure our governance and reporting requirements are met promptly, transparently, and effectively. Other responsibilities of COO Office include ISD DMT meeting facilitation, management of ISD’s contribution to strategic planning, leading the ISD internal engagement strategy, problem-solving, and management of senior calendars and travel. Therefore, we need to ensure we have robust processes which allow us to deliver at pace.
A key element of the success of ISD is the ability for teams to collaborate and work together on cross-cutting challenges and activities. To develop this connection, COO Office develop Internal Engagement events. This includes visibility visits for the COO and ISD DMT. The visits take place each month during which the COO is paired with a member of ISD DMT to visit an office across the UK which has members of ISD and the wider BRC. The aim is to enable our people to meet with and ask questions of our leadership team and recognise and educate ourselves on the work of our colleagues in ISD and across BRC. More recently, this collaboration also took the form of our first ISD Leadership Conference in which the senior leaders of ISD met for a two-day event to explore the theme of leadership, to network, and strengthen knowledge of ISD’ Service Offer. We had great feedback and are therefore looking to arrange more conferences this year. We hope to organise events with a wide range of attendees spread across the UK to ensure we are as inclusive as possible. Specifically, we are looking to arrange another ISD leadership conference, an Equality Diversity & Inclusion conference, an All ISD conference and a Level 5s+ conference. This will take a significant planning, but we hope it will be valuable for all ISD to have the opportunity to connect face-to-face and learn more about how we can work closer as a directorate.
To ensure we provide quality support to the COO/ISD DMT and facilitate valuable and engaging visits and conferences we would like a volunteer to assist with our Internal engagement planning and reviewing the key processes for such events. Specifically, assisting with the logistics and planning of the conferences and visits with the opportunity to attend the conferences themselves as a facilitator.
Primarily, the volunteer would work closely with the COO Office team on a day-to-day basis. The role would also involve working with our ISD DMT including the COO to ensure the smooth running of our events.
Typical tasks on the placement may include;
- Facilitating COO/ISD DMT visibility events
- Facilitating the planning and delivery of ISD conferences
- Reviewing current process maps for the above tasks for continuous improvement opportunities
- Creating any additional process maps.
You need to have good interpersonal, diplomacy, communication and teamwork skills although full training can be given for any technical requirements. We keep the beneficiary at the heart of what we do, working to understand their needs and the difference we make. Also someone who is/has:
- IT skills i.e. Microsoft Office and Teams
- Project management
- Communication
- Deliver at pace.
PLEASE ENSURE YOU STATE YOUR EDUCATION, TRAINING & WORK EXPERIENCE ON YOUR SUPPORTING STATEMENT.
Bursary Scheme
The British Red Cross offers a bursary scheme to those placement volunteers from low-income households. Eligibility will be determined through a separate application process open to all short-listed candidates. All British Red Cross volunteers are entitled to out-of-pocket reasonable expenses.
For this scheme we are defining low-income households as:
Inside London: Living with family or partner £25,000 or under. Living independently £22.500 or under
Outside London: Living with family or partner £18,500 or under. Living independently £16,500 or under
Young People and this role
Our placement volunteer opportunities are open to people at different stages of their career, aged 15 or above. Whether you’re student, a recent graduate or someone with more experience looking for a career change, we would be happy to hear from you.
Anyone can volunteer with the Red Cross from the age of 15. An individual risk assessment, parental consent and safeguarding considerations will be required for those aged 15 – 17. The nature of the activities specific to your intern opportunity may mean that you need to be 18 years or older.
Diversity
We welcome applications from people of different backgrounds, experience and circumstances. We seek to ensure that our organisation and our services are relevant and accessible to all, with equality, diversity and fairness at the core of what we do. We invite applications from individuals regardless of their gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, age, sexual orientation, religion or political belief and are committed to promoting fair participation and equality of opportunity for all of our applicants.
The British Red Cross is committed to being inclusive, with a diverse workforce. We encourage applications from people from the widest possible diversity of backgrounds, cultures and experiences – including disabled and ethnic minority candidates. We value fresh perspectives and insights gained by involving and welcoming people from the widest possible diversity of background, culture and experience. This is to contribute to the breadth of experience we need to respond to people in crisis.