Senior Sustainability Strategy Consultant

Location: 168 Shoreditch High Street, E1 6HU (one day in the office, four days flexible
working)

Start date: Immediately

Contract: Full time

Key skills & knowledge: Sustainability, social impact, and strategy
development

Experience: 5+ years agency experience

Reporting into: Associate Strategy Director

To apply: You will be taken to an external website where you will be asked to fill out an application
form. Make sure to attach your CV and cover letter. Tell us why Given, why this role and why
you.

Application closes: February 12th 2022

The Opportunity

Given is the agency for purpose-driven businesses and brands. Everything that we do is about
making businesses and brands a force for good – helping create positive change for people,
communities and the world. Working with ambitious clients on brand purpose and sustainable
business strategies we are seeing the demand for the support that we can offer and grow
exponentially.

As examples of the types of work you would be involved in, in the last few months we have been:

• Developing the sustainability strategy for a leading healthcare company
• Helping one of the UK’s leading coffee companies tell its sustainability story
• Sparking new thinking on inclusive healthcare at a global consumer health company
• Creating a sustainability strategy and three-year roadmap for an international flower
  delivery company
• Working on a social impact strategy for a group of family care brands

As we head into the next chapter of growth for our business we are looking for a passionate,
smart and imaginative senior strategic consultant, with a depth of experience in delivering
sustainability projects to join our strategy team. We offer great benefits, a collaborative and
creative, ideas-based environment, impactful and meaningful work, brilliant career
opportunities, and the chance to work with some of the biggest and best businesses & brands
in the world.

The role

We are looking for someone with practical experience, sustainability knowledge and thought
leadership credentials, who can bring a clear point of view on current and emerging
sustainability and social impact topics and provide clear strategic advice to our clients about
the strategic choices they need to make. We need someone who can draw on their experience and
knowledge to talk expansively and credibly about sustainability and social impact with the
passion and behaviours to inspire teams, colleagues and clients.

This role will see you leading projects, running workshops, uncovering disruptive insights,
engaging leaders and helping them to make clear strategic choices and also disruptive creative
ideas for their business and brand. You will play a prominent role on our sustainability and
social impact projects specifically, but as we are a dynamic and nimble agency with a
fast-moving ideas culture, you will need to be comfortable stretching your skills and expertise
across the full range of services that we offer across the definition, embedding and activation
of purpose within businesses and brands.

You’ll need to feel comfortable working on lots of different challenges at any one time. You
might, for example be helping a client identify their overall sustainability strategy, setting
related goals and targets and defining a roadmap of actions required to achieve these targets,
or helping to embed broader purpose into a company culture and decision-making or playing a
role in developing internal and external (customer-facing) communications, brand strategy or
innovation.

As a senior sustainability strategy consultant you will need to have played a role and be
comfortable with taking the lead on large client briefs, working closely with members of our
Senior Leadership Team, Directors and Associate Directors with responsibility for setting the
direction of the project, leading the thinking and having oversight of junior colleagues. We’re
a growing team, and we nurture our own talent, which means there’s scope to grow into a
leadership position on the team if that’s what you’re after.

About you

You will bring deep understanding and experience in sustainability, ideally including time in a
strategic consultancy, marketing or innovation agency or client-side roles. You should have the
ability to engage with sustainability subject matter experts within the businesses we work
with, able to talk to them and understand the technical details as well as work with other
internal and external stakeholders as well as other Given colleagues on more creative elements
of strategy. You’ll be passionate about the role businesses and brands can play in creating
real world change and have experience of delivering sustainability and social impact projects
and strategies for businesses and brands. You’ll ideally have great technical expertise and
knowledge in sustainability and social impact but also be very comfortable coming up with
providing clear strategic advice, direction and coming up with creative brand, communication
and innovation ideas.

You will bring strategic skills, demonstrating that you are comfortable with the individual
elements of sustainability strategies and roadmaps, comfortable not just in the technical
aspects of analysis but going beyond that to advise clients on the strategic direction they
take and proactively developing creative ideas for their business and brand. You will be
comfortable leading projects with targeted guidance and support from Directors. Across the
strategy team and within the agency as a whole, you will have the ambition to drive us forward
and support the agency to grow and develop outside of client projects. This might include for
example contributing to articles and thought leadership and offer development in the
sustainability space.

You will have experience building client relationships, enjoy owning your work projects as well
as working with and guiding more junior colleagues. We’re looking for someone who can
demonstrate confidence in their own skills, recommend strategic solutions & creative ideas
to the clients we work with, through a proactive, collaborative but hands on approach. You must
be comfortable with project management, client relationships, managing commercials, delivering
to project timelines and producing exceptional work. And, you’ll be excited to work in a
creative, ideas culture, ideally with experience of working with creative teams to deliver
brilliant creative ideas. 

Day to day tasks and responsibilities

Strategic thinking and insight

• Lead strategic thinking on projects, supporting the team to produce quality, insightful, and
  relevant recommendations
• Bring a confident and well articulated perspective on projects, offering challenges and
  solutions to better our work and make clear strategic recommendations and creative solutions
  for our clients
• Be able to apply sustainability and social impact expertise to projects, demonstrating
  in-depth knowledge of issue management, sustainability leadership and measurable impact
  strategies

Project delivery

• Lead and be responsible for all client facing deliverables, such as workshops, interviews,
  insight gathering tasks, presentations and strategic and creative outputs
• Create insightful and client ready outputs and give clear briefs to colleagues who contribute
  to and help shape our response to client challenges and briefs
• Play a leading role on large sustainability projects with minimal Director supervision
• Provide clear strategic support to clients on sustainability and social impact issues, being
  able to guide them in their decision making and provide context on the market and future trends

Managing client relationships

• Build strong, healthy relationships with clients and an understanding of their business
• Be a trusted point of contact for your clients’ projects
• Drive project profitability and account growth, ensuring projects are delivered with
  commercial success

Business development

• Help grow revenue by upselling to existing clients and sourcing new opportunities
• Lead and contribute to pitches and proposal writing
• Contribute to our thought leadership, offer development and IP development

Team and culture

• Play an active role in all areas of the strategy team and internal initiatives
• Share sustainability and social impact insights, new thinking and knowledge with the team
• Be comfortable in a fast-moving ideas culture

Recruitment process

Our first step will be a 45 minute interview with our Associate Strategy Director so you can
understand more about the role and we can understand a bit more about you and why you’ve
applied. Next, we’ll invite successful candidates to a second round interview where we will ask
you to answer a short brief. This should only take a few hours of your time to prep and helps
us understand how you would apply your knowledge and expertise to a particular challenge. The
final round is usually a 30 minute meeting to answer any outstanding questions on either side.

For our people

• Hybrid working, with only one fixed day in the office a week
• We offer 26 days paid holiday per calendar year pro rata, plus public holidays. We also close
  the office between Christmas and New Year, which is in addition to your paid holiday allowance
• Company bonus scheme
• Pension Scheme with Aviva, eligible after passing your probation
• Health plan with SimplyHealth, eligible after passing your probation
• £100 working from home allowance to help your home office set up, eligible after passing your
  probation
• A tenure bonus reward after 3 and 6 years of employment
• Work from anywhere for 1 month of the year, after your first year of employment
• Access to our Given Campus for training and development needs
• Interest free season ticket loan and Bike to Work scheme

About Given

Given is an award-winning consultancy for purpose driven businesses and brands. We are in
business to change business for good. We bring together strategic consultancy, true expertise
in purpose and sustainability and an in-house creative studio — all under one roof. We help our
clients define, embed and activate your purpose to unlock purposeful growth.

We believe the key to unleashing the power of purpose is to first develop a clear sense of your
purpose as an organisation, that is then embedded across ways of working, culture and
decision-making and ultimately activated through all elements of your brand, including brand
experience, service and product propositions, as well as other elements of the marketing mix.
Our work and methodology combines creativity, co-creation and true credibility and expertise in
purpose, sustainability and DEI to create real lasting impact within our clients’ businesses.

You’ll be joining a creative, vibrant, ideas-led consultancy working across brands like IKEA,
Zalando, Kimberly Clark, John Lewis Partnership and Virgin Media O2. We are a team that blends
purpose, innovation and sustainability consulting, with design, digital and creative execution.

Given strives to be an equal opportunities employer and everyone’s commitment to this process
will be expected.