ABOUT US

Our vision at Noisy Cricket is to proliferate reciprocally nurturing systems. This means creating solutions that create mutual benefit for organisations and the people they exist to serve, so that everyone in society can thrive. 

We do this through our mission of bringing together diverse groups – including people from traditionally marginalised & disadvantaged communities plus individuals from cross-sector organisations – to co-create transformative and innovative social possibilities. 

In the coming three years, we’re working to advance our systemic approach, leveraging our expertise in both community engagement and organisational transformation. Short-term, we’re looking to scale up our social enterprise, continuing our agency work with clients across  the public, private and social sectors, as well as establishing a product to share our learning around co-creation to launch in the next three years. 

Longer-term, our venture activity around homeless employment and responsible technology is something we’re keen to invest in, both to scale our impact and underpin our sustainability as an organisation. Therefore, ensuring we’re optimising our financial well-being, establishing regenerative commercial models and taking a long-term approach which ensures reinvestment in our people, practice and purpose will be key to our growth. 

ABOUT YOU

Your Brief

Your role as Noisy Crickets’s non-executive financial and commercial director will involve:

• Ensuring a balance of financial sustainability and social impact through traded income, funding and investment across agency, product and venture activity through continuously learning and evolving our approach to money
• Refine and manage the financial and commercial strategy, decision-making and infrastructure to enable the organisation to realise its purpose of proliferating reciprocally nurturing systems
• Participate in the management of board governance and engage in wider team co-creation and  transformation efforts, from how we enable people or leverage legal, optimise our products and services or evolve our systemic approach

OUR NEEDS

Your Roles and Responsibilities

For the non-executive board role, we’re looking for:

• A solid foundation from which to adapt your approach to financial and commercial management
• A commitment to realising more equitable, inclusive and sustainable approaches to commerce both within organisations and society at large
• A willingness to embrace complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty as we explore, model and evolve systems change inherently through our own financial practice
• A hope-based and possibility-focused mindset around how we leverage money in service of our learning, evolution of our practice and scaling our impact

Key responsibilities include:

• Informing and co-creating financial and commercial strategy with the strategic director and wider board to support the organisation in the achievement of its purpose, objectives and goals
• Establishing and/or refining commercial modelling and financial projections to ensure optimisation of pricing, costs and capacity which  ensure healthy reserves and opportunity for reinvestment
• Overseeing monthly cashflow, quarterly financial reconciliation and ongoing VAT requirements to feed into new business development and cost management activity 
• Leading on the delivery and submission of end-of-year P&L reporting, R&D claims plus annual confirmation statements with Companies House alongside our accountants to ensure legal compliance with HMRC
• Establishing financial reporting infrastructure and management accounting as the organisation formalises its value proposition and operational models and supporting impact reporting 
• Exploring funding and investment routes, recommending finance options and supporting business case development alongside others directors plus specialist delivery partners (e.g. bid writers)
• Participating in three board meetings annually, including the preparation, chairing and approval of board minutes for one meeting annually, in addition to two monthly board sessions to support the wider board and strategic director
• Working alongside the Noisy Cricket board and team to develop annual strategy, people and legal infrastructure plus 

OUR OFFER

Your Commitment

We’re looking for people committed to our purpose and approach, so you’ll initially be brought on board for a three-year term. We expect to move and flex quickly in those three years, so excepting the founding director, anyone who would love to remain involved will be welcome to reapply for a role on the Noisy Cricket board.

You’ll be required to spend between 1-2 days a month – usually spread over the month rather than on a given day – on your role within Noisy Cricket plus collectively determined projects and director’s meetings, with flexibility around your existing work projects and existing commitments 

Time spent is always open to discussion, based on the organisation’s needs, your ambitions and availability and in balance with the work of the wider board. Our physical base is in central Manchester, but we’re flexible to travel and very comfortable working remotely, so happy to flex based on whatever works best.

Your Remuneration

As a C.I.C limited by share, demonstrating that social value is valuable is essential. It’s why pro-bono work offers aren’t for us, so for your role on the board, we’ll be offering 10% shares to value your time and investment in the organisation. So far, we’ve prioritised investing our capacity over generating profits, to evolve our practice and learn how best to optimise impact and ensure sustainability. 

The shares offered will be redeemable and without voting rights, so upon leaving your role with Noisy Cricket, will be returned back to the organisation. As directors, we’ll collectively determine whether these are paid in the interim or at the end of each financial year. What is guaranteed is a rich professional and personal learning experience, plus the opportunity to explore new social possibilities, internally and externally to Noisy Cricket. 

Our Ways of Working

We work collaboratively at Noisy Cricket – hierarchies aren’t conducive to co-creation – and flexible working is the norm. so you’ll be free to self-organise your work alongside the Noisy Cricket team. We reflect on performance and growth as a team too, so regular reviews and retros will become a regular part of your life. 

We are currently trialling four day weeks and also have long grass Fridays, where we go offline for the day and work on personal learning and professional development plus team building and Noisy Cricket projects. That means core working days are Tuesday to Thursday online. 

At Noisy Cricket, we’re all about active listening, courageously caring and being ambitiously hopeful, so if you’re curious, willing to challenge the status quo and dream big, you’ll be right at home. 

Given our work to bring together diverse groups of people, making sure we’re inclusive and keeping vulnerable adults safe is essential, so both safeguarding and diversity and inclusion are core to our policies and procedures. 

How we work is an open conversation and constantly evolving, however, so we’re keen for people who are willing to continuously learn, grow and play a part in how we shape our practices, processes and policies, both internally and externally to the organisation. 

YOUR APPLICATION

Stage 1: Expressions of Interest

Simply let us know that you’re keen to play a part in Noisy Cricket’s future and why by filling in this expression of interest form here.

Deadline: Friday 17th May 2024

Stage 2: Initial Chat 

We’ll have an initial conversation to clarify any questions you have about the role, its remit and responsibilities and required approach, so we’re all on the same page. 

Deadline: Friday 24th May 2024

Stage 3: Proposal

You’ll be invited to send across your CV – so we can understand your background – and a case study or proposal which offers insights into how you have or would approach shaping a commercial model for a new product offering. 

CV gaps, alternative work experiences or career changes aren’t an issue here. We only want to get a feel of where you’re coming from. The case study or proposal simply needs to demonstrate why you’re a great fit for the role. 

Deadline: Friday 31st May 2024

Stage 4: Interview

This will be a simple chat to explore a little bit more about who you are, what your values are and what motivates you, as well as how this might influence your approach to the role. No preparation is needed. 

Deadline: Friday 7th June 2024

ABOUT US

Our vision at Noisy Cricket is to proliferate reciprocally nurturing systems. This means creating solutions that create mutual benefit for organisations and the people they exist to serve, so that everyone in society can thrive. 

We do this through our mission of bringing together diverse groups – including people from traditionally marginalised & disadvantaged communities plus individuals from cross-sector organisations – to co-create transformative and innovative social possibilities. 

In the coming three years, we’re working to advance our systemic approach, leveraging our expertise in both community engagement and organisational transformation. We’re also looking to scale up our social enterprise, continuing our agency work with clients across funders, charities, government and academia, as well as establishing a product to share our learning around co-creation. 

However, it’s our venture activity around homeless employment and responsible technology that holds the greatest promise for both social impact and commercial sustainability, and our product development activity – sharing our learning around co-creation and transformation – that will help us get there.

Therefore, having support across the team to manage operational and administrative processes will be key to our growth. Fancy playing your part in pioneering human approaches to employment and bringing home the humanity to tech? 

ABOUT YOU

Your Brief

To enable Noisy Cricket to progress its work, we require a virtual assistant or office support to:

• Provide administrative support in processing financial information, data and legal documentation for team members, suppliers, partners and clients to free up team member capacity
• Assist in the day-to-day operations of the organisation, establishing and automating processes in marketing, HR and governance to maximise the efficiency and effectiveness of Noisy Cricket’s ways of working
• Bringing a problem-solving and solution-orientated mindset to supporting and organising the Noisy Cricket board of directors and team members in delivering, catering and platforming events, meetings and travel arrangements

OUR NEEDS

Your Roles and Responsibilities

For the virtual assistant / office support role, the role requires:

• A successful track record in providing virtual or personal assistant experience
• Administrative skills, operational strengths and problem-solving attitude
• Self-organising and proactive approach to client support
• Charity, social enterprise or social entrepreneur-aligned clients

Key responsibilities include:

• Supporting monthly  financial reconciliation through gathering, recording and reconciling organisation receipts and invoices in Xero
• Recording and checking monthly data capture, usage and management for GDPR and ROPA purposes
• Overseeing the quarterly write-up and editing of board minutes plus uploading and sending minutes for board member review and sig
• Connecting and automating marketing platforms, software and processes ad hoc for ease of use and transfer of data
• Collecting information, setting up and sending team, client and partnership contracts out for ad hoc sign-off
• Supporting the occasional onboarding, set up and support of new employees at Noisy Cricket, including PAYE, pensions and password access
• Sourcing, gathering quotes and agreeing on event spaces, catering and technical support for regular Noisy Cricket events, meetings and activities. 
• Searching, agreeing and booking team travel and accommodation as and when required

OUR OFFER

Your Remuneration

Starting with a six-month contract to determine alignment around collectively agreed outcomes and outputs, with the potential to continue the relationship and build expertise and momentum over time. 

As a result, we’re looking for support for 10 hours per month, dependent on need, at an approximate £30 hourly rate to a maximum of £300 total each month.

We’re open-minded about the nature of the relationship, so this can be a straightforward contract or a retainer relationship. If you have something else in mind, we’d love to hear it. It’s unlikely we’d employ someone in a permanent position until we’ve better evaluated the role’s value to Noisy Cricket’s work.

Our Ways of Working

We work collaboratively at Noisy Cricket – hierarchies aren’t conducive to co-creation – and flexible working is the norm. so you’ll be free to self-organise your work alongside the Noisy Cricket team. We reflect on performance and growth as a team too, so regular reviews and retros will become a regular part of your life. 

We are currently trialling four day weeks and also have long grass Fridays, where we go offline for the day and work on personal learning and professional development and Noisy Cricket projects. That means working days are Tuesday to Thursday online. 

At Noisy Cricket, we’re all about active listening, courageously caring and being ambitiously hopeful, so if you’re curious, willing to challenge the status quo and dream big, you’ll be right at home. 

Given our work to bring together diverse groups of people, making sure we’re inclusive and keeping vulnerable adults safe is essential, so both safeguarding and diversity and inclusion are core to our policies and procedures. 

Our work in these areas is an open conversation and constantly evolving, however, so we’re keen for people who are willing to continuously learn, grow and play a part in how we shape our practices, processes and policies, both internally and externally to the organisation. 

Stage 1: Expressions of Interest

Simply let us know that you’re keen to play a part in Noisy Cricket’s future and why by filling in this expression of interest form here by Friday 19th April 2024.

Stage 2: Pitch & Experience

We’d love you to send across your CV, portfolio or comprehensive LinkedIn profile so we can get an idea of your background, plus a proposed approach for what successful relationship might look like with a small social enterprise.

CV gaps, alternative work experiences or careers changes aren’t an issue here. We just want to get a feel of where you’re coming from. The proposed approach simply needs to demonstrate why you’re a great fit for the position by Friday 26th April 2024.

Stage 3: Informal Conversation

This will be a simple chat to explore a little bit more about who you are, your values and what motivates you by Friday 3rd May 2024.

If you’re here looking for an exciting support position with a progressive social enterprise, you’re in the right place…

ABOUT US

Our vision at Noisy Cricket is to proliferate reciprocally nurturing systems. This means shifting away from unjust & oppressive systems and modelling equitable, inclusive & sustainable ways of being. 

We do this through our mission of bringing together diverse groups – including people from traditionally marginalised & disadvantaged communities plus individuals from cross-sector organisations – to co-create transformative and innovative social possibilities. 

In the coming three years, we’re working to advance our systemic approach, leveraging our expertise in both community engagement and organisational transformation. We’re also looking to scale up our social enterprise, continuing our agency work with clients across funders, charities, government and academia. 

However, it’s our venture activity around homeless employment and responsible technology that holds the greatest promise for both social impact and commercial sustainability.

Therefore, accessing funding and sponsorship to underpin the discovery and alpha phases of HI Future and the Responsible Tech Collective will be key to our growth. Fancy playing your part in pioneering human approaches to employment and bringing home the humanity to tech? 

ABOUT YOU

Your Brief

To enable Noisy Cricket to progress its work, we require both bid writing and partnership-building support to:

• Provide a steady source of grant funding or partnership funding activity to;
• Enable the initiation or continuation of HI Future and Responsible Tech Collective venture activity OR underpin the costs of further developing Noisy Cricket’s community engagement expertise or exploration of transformation journeys.
• Bring funding opportunities, bid writing expertise, funder and corporate networks plus partnership-building experience to;
• Free up Noisy Cricket’s capacity for strategy, design, facilitation and campaign plus continue to develop insights around funding systems changing projects and ventures

OUR NEEDS

Your Roles & Responsibilities

For both the bid writer and the partnership builder, the role requires:

• Systems change and co-creation understanding
• Responsible technology (Responsible Tech Collective) and poverty & homelessness (HI Future) insights 
• A successful track record in medium to large bid writing across innovation, academic and grant funders or a portfolio of sustained partnerships built across business, government and philanthropic organisations
• Narrative building and networking experience

Both the bid writer and partnership builder will be required to work alongside each other plus Noisy Cricket’s strategic and commercial director on the following:

Bid Writer Responsibilities	Partnership Builder Responsibilities
Monthly Funding Opportunities Opportunity Sourcing plus List Development & Refinement (e.g. List)m Opportunity Prioritisation (e.g. Assessment Matrix) and Fund & Partnership Planning
Ongoing Narrative Shaping Narrative Tools & Resources Creation (e.g. Planning Framework), Funding Library Creation (e.g. Responsible Tech Collective) and Narrative Development & Refinement
Ad Hoc Bid Writing & Submission Bid Writing, Bid Editing and Bid Submission	Proposal Writing & Pitching Proposal Writing, Proposal Presentations and Bid Editing Support

At the outset, we’ll clarify our shared purpose, roles and goals, plus any hopes and fears we have as a team, and preferred ways of working. We anticipate there’ll be at least one monthly meeting, with regular asynchronous communication as we build shared resources and narratives to improve our performance over time. 

We’re looking to bring in a minimum of £250,000 in funding and partnerships annually, to underpin the costs of strategy, design, facilitation and campaigning plus development and hosting costs for technology.

OUR OFFER

Your Remuneration

Starting with a six-month contract to determine alignment around collectively agreed outcomes and outputs, with the potential to continue the relationship and build expertise and momentum over time. 

As a result, we’re offering the following: 

• Bid Writer | £12,000 @ Approx 4 Days Monthly / Minimum 4 x Bids Total (Oct 23 – Mar 24)
• Partnership Builder | £9,000 @ Approx 1.5 Days Monthly / Minimum 4 x Relationships Total (Oct 23 – Mar 24)

We’re open-minded about the nature of the relationship, so this can be a straightforward contract, a retainer relationship or if you have something else in mind, we’d love to hear it. It’s unlikely we’d employ someone in a permanent position until we’ve better evaluated the impact of the role on Noisy Cricket’s work.

Our Ways of Working

We work collaboratively at Noisy Cricket – hierarchies aren’t conducive to co-creation – and flexible working is the norm. so you’ll be free to self-organise your work alongside the Noisy Cricket team. We reflect on performance and growth as a team too, so reviews and retros will become a regular part of your life. 

We also have long grass Fridays, where we go offline for the day and work on personal learning and professional development plus Noisy Cricket projects. That means working days are Monday to Thursday only.

At Noisy Cricket, we’re all about active listening, courageously caring and being ambitiously hopeful, so if you’re curious and self-reflective, willing to challenge the status quo and dream big, you’ll be right at home. 

Given our work to bring together diverse groups of people, making sure we’re inclusive and keeping vulnerable adults safe is essential, so both safeguarding and diversity are core to our policies and procedures. 

Our work in these areas is an open conversation and constantly evolving, however, so we’re keen for people who are willing to continuously learn, grow and play a part in how we shape our practices, processes and policies, both internally and externally to the organisation.

YOUR APPLICATION

Stage 1: Expressions of Interest

Simply let us know that you’re keen to play a part in Noisy Cricket’s future and why by filling in this expression of interest form here by Friday 8th September.

Stage 2: Pitch & Experience

We’d love you to send across your CV, portfolio or comprehensive LinkedIn profile so we can get an idea of your background, plus a case study or proposed approach to how you would approach bid writing or partnership building, and what success might look like. 

CV gaps, alternative work experiences or careers changes aren’t an issue here. We just want to get a feel of where you’re coming from. The case study or proposed approach can come from anywhere – personal or professional experiences – and simply needs to demonstrate why you’re a great fit for the position by Friday 22nd September.

Stage 3: Informal Conversation

This will be a simple chat to explore a little bit more about who you are, your values and what motivates you by Friday 29th September. 

If you’re here looking for an exciting service design with a progressive social enterprise, you’re in the right place…

ABOUT US

Our Organisation

At Noisy Cricket, we engineer systems change. As social innovators, our mission is to build people-powered movements. Our vision is to bring diverse voices together to co-create solutions to social issues.  

Working purposefully and collectively on the root causes of social issues, founder Lauren Coulman, director Harry Bailey and our partner agencies work to create strategic and cross-sector responses to structural, cultural and personal issues in our society, all with impacted people at the heart of the solutions designed.

Using our unique humanity-centred design process and culture-led theory of change, we map out issue-led insights, build communities, shape campaigns and design social products and services. 

Through our holistic approach, Noisy Cricket’s powerful work empowers changemakers and facilitates social change in health inequality, youth poverty and tech ethics. That’s just through our client consultancy work too. Through conscientious innovation, we’re also on the cusp of launching our first in-house venture in homeless employment, and shaping our second in responsible tech too. 

Our Ambition

As a striving start up, this past year saw us convert to a social enterprise, as well as attract significant funding and sponsorship to fuel our growth. As we look to cement our sustainability and scale our impact, Noisy Cricket needs a curious, courageous and collaborative team to help drive our success.

With aspirations to further strengthen the impact and reach of the consultancy, the next stage of growth will involve refining our own products and services with which to drive and influence change. Developing and financing new ventures is also key, in demonstrating the power of our approach, as well as providing the capital to underpin future research and development. 

With a solid base in Greater Manchester, in the next three years, we intend to grow nationally, as our movements grow and take new and exciting forms. Health inequality, youth poverty and digital skills are our current spheres of influence and addressing social issues such as these – with diverse communities and strong sense of purpose – is essential in coming on board.

As thought leaders in this space – our founder Lauren Coulman contributes at Forbes.com and director Harry Bailey commentates at Tech for Good Live – we platform our systems thinking and unique insights into social issues. Platforming our team and community of changemakers will play a major part in our intention to grow into a sustainable social enterprise by 2025. 

Most important, however, is the innovative culture of social entrepreneurialism we want to instil in the organisation, with each individual and organisation we employ, partner with or influence to think differently and model new approaches. Actively listening, courageously caring and being ambitiously hopeful is how we live and breathe as Noisy Cricket. 

ABOUT YOU

Your Remit

Your role as Noisy Cricket’s first service design lead is to oversee and deliver our socially and commercially impactful products and services, understand our users and stakeholder’s holistic needs and map out the innovative models that inform further research and development. As a start-up, you’ll be encouraged to participate in strategic thinking as much as mucking in on delivery.

You will be working directly with our founder, Lauren Coulman, in shaping how we co-create impactful and sustainable solutions to social issues. You’ll also be working with the wider team in contributing to insights and strategies plus communities and campaigns as we grow and evolve our work as an organisation.

We are looking for a service design lead who thinks systemically, is comfortable challenging cultures and structures and is a team player who empowers people. With an ability to work in a flexible way across diverse issues, our new team member will feel comfortable working with a myriad of customers and partners, switching from client consultancy work to our in-house ventures with ease. 

Most importantly, you’ll want to make the world a more equitable, equal and enlightened place, and that’s why we’re particularly interested in hearing from women and gender non-conforming individuals, people of colour, LGBTQIA folk and disabled or neurodiverse people. Being diverse and inclusive simply means we inherently live and breathe the kind of change we want to see in the world.

Your Brief

We’re looking for someone who has the ability (or potential to learn how) to lead and deliver on the following: 

• Models & Ventures: Mapping end-to-end services and informing design priorities, all of which effect systems change – through the redesign of structures, shift in cultures and empowerment of people – with consultancy clients and on in-house ventures
• User Research & Service Design: Scoping, designing and prototyping tech products and services – plus the ongoing testing and learning of related features and functionality – underpinned by holistically understanding user needs, synthesizing and mapping insights
• Agency & Partners: Collaborating and building relationships with external consultants, agencies and partners – from behavioral, content, UX and accessibility design specialists to data and development experts – covering a variety of issues, approaches and sectors
• Processes & Practices: Shaping internal processes and policies – including the creation of tools and resources that enable the wider team to work collaboratively and effectively – plus engaging in reflective practice to strengthen and evolve our approach

The role is autonomous, and in feeding into strategy and planning alongside the team, you’ll be free to prioritize between consultancy work, in-house ventures and Noisy Cricket projects. 

ABOUT OUR OFFER

Your Remuneration

Starting with a two-year contract, we’re offering £55K annually for the role with 34 days holiday (including bank holidays) annually and a £1000 training budget for the year. You’ll also have access to a skilled mentor to support your professional development and a coach to work with personally.

Our Ways of Working

We work collaboratively at Noisy Cricket – hierarchies aren’t conducive to co-creation – and offer flexible working, so you’ll be free to self-organise your work alongside your teammates. We reflect on performance and growth as a team too. It takes a village, people. 

We also have long grass Fridays, where we go offline for the day and work on personal learning and professional development and Noisy Cricket projects, plus any consultancy work or venture needs that you’re itching to get under the skin of. 

At Noisy Cricket, we’re all about active listening, courageously caring and being ambitiously hopeful, so if you’re curious, willing to challenge the status quo and dream big, you’ll be right at home. 

Given our work to bring together diverse groups of people, making sure we’re inclusive and keeping vulnerable adults safe, so both safeguarding and diversity and inclusion are core to our policies and procedures. 

Our work in these areas is an open conversation and constantly evolving, however, so we’re keen for people who are willing to continuously learn, grow and play a part in how we shape our practices, processes and policies, both internally and externally to the organisation. 

ABOUT YOUR APPLICATION

Stage 1: Expressions of Interest 

Simply let us know that you’re keen to play a part in Noisy Cricket’s future and why by filling in this expression of interest form here. 

Deadline: 5pm on Friday 2nd July

Stage 2: Pitch

If selected, you’ll be invited to tell us about you and why co-creation speaks to you. This can be a letter, video, written story… whatever speaks to you creatively and will help you best express why Noisy Cricket as an organisation is right for you.

Deadline: 5pm on Friday 16th July

Stage 3: Experience

You’ll be invited to send across your CV, portfolio or comprehensive LinkedIn profile – whatever best showcases your experience – so we can get an idea of your background, plus a case study or proposed approach to how you would address a design brief.. 

CV gaps, alternative work experiences or careers changes aren’t an issue here. We just want to get a feel of where you’re coming from. The case study or proposed approach can come from anywhere – personal or professional experiences – and simply needs to demonstrate why you’re a great fit for the role. 

Deadline: 5pm on Friday 30th July 

Stage 4: Informal Conversation

This will be a simple chat to explore a little bit more about who you are, your values and what motivates you. 

Deadline: Friday 13th August

Stage 5: Formal Interview

We’ll be digging a little deeper into your personal and professional experience and strengths. Past skills will be useful here too, but we’re more interested in your abilities and your approach to your work. 

Deadline: Friday 27th August

Noisy Cricket’s mission is to bring diverse people together to co-create social change, with a vision of creating people-powered movements, so centering people impacted by social issues is integral to our work as a social enterprise. For HI Future, we recruited Mooch – a person with lived experience of homelessness – as a paid consultant, and worked with 15 impacted by homelessness to engage in user research, co-creation and testing of the HI Future solution. 

Compensated for the time spent on HI Future, we worked with those impacted who were looking for work, as well as people who had successfully managed to secure roles. Their personal insight into the issue, willingness to improve social mobility recruitment and ability to speak truth to power were three of the core strengths that this group of resilient, courageous and future-focused people brought to the community. 

HI FUTURE COMMUNITY FUNDERS, SPONSORS, PARTNERS AND PARTICIPANTS

Ensuring people with personal insight into homelessness were central helped us better understand the root causes of business barriers to homelessness, but to ensure we had a holistic perspective on the issues, we also worked with charities and public sector organisations who focus on helping homeless people become ready-for-work. Complementing our efforts to remove business barriers rather than duplication existing service provision, we worked with:

• Business in the Community
• Groundwork in Greater Manchester
• Mustard Tree
• Bolton at Home
• Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council
• Business Growth Hub
• Department for Work and Pensions

Darren Amos, Balfour Beatty “[What worked well on the HI Future project was the] bringing together of all different parties including those affected by homelessness, support organisations and potential employers from different industries helped to provide a real insight into the issues and a spirit of collaboration”

Bringing experience of working with vulnerable people, the employment leads, work coaches and support workers we engaged with brought safeguarding skills and expertise on working with vulnerable adults, an objective perspective on social mobility recruitment issues and insights on the challenges and opportunities surrounding influencing businesses to recruitment homeless people.

With our focus on removing business barriers to homeless employment, the private sector was an integral part of co-creation too. Working with businesses across construction, energy, travel and retail industries, we made sure to understand social mobility recruitment challenges holistically. We also worked with HR, diversity and inclusion plus social value leads, to understand needs from different perspectives within each organisation. 

MOOCH ASHLEY (LIVED EXPERIENCE CONSULTANT) AND LAUREN COULMAN (NOISY CRICKET CEO)

Our partnerships with Manchester Airport Group, Balfour Beatty, Cadent Gas and Co-op Group helped us to see where the core challenges and opportunities were in removing business barriers to homeless employment.  The majority of these challenges were based on cultural beliefs, including business employees believing impacted people weren’t willing to work, despite 88% of homeless people wanting to work again and 88% having prior work experience. 

However, these challenges also had systemic impacts, seen in how willing businesses were to target people who they perceived to have limited value in the workplace.. However, we also learned that businesses are willing to target graduates – despite having little or no previous employment experience – and adapt the recruitment process, presenting an opportunity to reshape interviews to help impacted people have a better chance of success. 

Angie Stott, Balfour Beatty “[The unexpected outcomes and impacts of working on HI Future was] the way I view the issue of homelessness and those affected by it. I didn’t realise there is a huge spectrum of homelessness and a real need for an employment matchmaking and support service.”

Co-creation wasn’t without its challenges, however. The people with personal insight into homelessness that we worked with had occasional housing, finances and health challenges that sometimes impacted their ability to effectively contribute to the HI Future project. As charity and public support workers had recruited the 15 people we paid to participate, we had appropriate support structures in place, but required us to continuously recruit new people throughout the process. 

Charities and public sector organisations also helped us shape our safeguarding measures and provision, but one of the major challenges we experienced was that support workers, work coaches and employment leads sometimes spoke on behalf of the homeless people they had recruited to participate in HI Future. Sometimes, their perspective contradicted what homeless people were telling us they needed, requiring expert facilitation to manage. 

IMAGE 5: MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS PRESS COVERAGE (FEBRUARY 2019)

From a business perspective, we found our partners were willing to share openly – regardless of how the outcomes reflected on their organisation – and were keen to learn about the issue, their contribution to it and how they might change to better support homeless recruitment. Motivated  to address skill gaps, demonstrate social value for public tenders and improve diverse recruitment, however, we recognised this was a self-selecting group. 

As a result, in future we will endeavour to develop participation programmes that incentivise people impacted by issues to engage over the course of a project as opposed to a one off basis. We’ll also aim to engage businesses that have less of a vested interest in the outcome of our co-created solutions, so we have a better understanding of entrenched barriers to the issues we’re looking to address.

Faye Goodworth, Content Designer at Paper Studio “[The value that HI Future brought to me was] A reminder of the difference working in a human-centred way can make to the people you’re designing for. Evidence of how personal bias affects decision making, and how solving problems for people with experiences different to ours does not work for anybody if it is based on our own assumptions. Validation that something as seemingly insignificant as the language you choose to use can make a huge difference to how a person feels and experiences a service. Inspiration to continue championing human-centred content and service design”

While we prepped businesses for co-creation through running the education workshop first and foremost, we didn’t undertake the same kinds of activity with charities and the public sector, who we assumed would be able to address their own preconceptions about what was needed. Building on our existing facilitation tools and training we use to prep co-creation attendees, we are exploring the roll out of a bias-check session for support organisations too.

Throughout 2019 and into 2020, Noisy Cricket C.I.C received sponsorship from Balfour Beatty, Manchester Airport Group (MAG) and the Co-op Group, in addition to a development grant from The National Lottery Community Fund, and a further donation from the Cadent Foundation. Huzzah!

As a start up social enterprise, this funding was essential, as it allowed us to co-create HI Future – our innovative and disruptive homeless employment solution – to help us on our journey towards achieving our cross-sector community’s vision of enabling secure and stable futures for homeless people. 

IMAGE 1: HI FUTURE PROJECT TIMELINE

Inspired by an industry research partnership with Hyper Island in 2018 – where eight solutions to removing business barriers to homeless employment were explored – the HI Future project kick-started in January 2019, bringing our business partners together with charities, public sector initiatives and people impacted by homelessness.

Working collectively, the HI Future community embarked on an 18-month journey, starting with user research to help us holistically understand the experiences surrounding social mobility recruitment for businesses, the social sectors and impacted people. During a series of one-on-one interviews, workshops and focus groups, we learned a hell of a lot.

HI Future User Research Insights – Business employees showed a narrow understanding of homelessness, perceiving it to be predominantly rough sleeping, which accounts for 5-6% of the homeless population nationally (Shelter, 2019) – Business employees perceive personal issues (e.g. financial or relationship troubles) to be the root cause of homeless instead of systemic contributors (e.g. insecure work or lack of social or affordable housing).  – Both business employees and decision makers in the organisation shared that while they didn’t have negative perceptions of homeless people, other people in the organisation may… – Decision makers recognised that the combination of fellow employees’ perceptions (e.g. drug or alcohol issues) and business needs (e.g. background checks) were likely to impact a person with lived experience of homelessness’ ability to secure a job – In recognising that a homeless person may have more personal challenges, businesses asked for support for managers in helping a homeless person back into work, but expected those impacted to behave the same as any other employee – Impacted people told us that the bureaucracy imposed in getting ready-for-work and during recruitment was confusing, and that often, they were required to engage in training  or provide information that wasn’t useful as a tick a box exercise – People with personal insight into homelessness were also aware that they were being profiled by businesses during recruitment, that their experiences and personal presentation were being judged and that they were expected to change to fit into new organisations – Those impacted would like feedback to help them better prepare for the recruitment process, and often need more tailored support as they navigate housing, financial and health challenges – Charity and public sector workers confirmed this was essential, as people settle back into structure, and that building trust is essential, as without honesty between those impacted and the people supporting them, things may go awry.  – Charities and the public sector shared that a job at any cost is no good, as people are more likely to leave than stay in an unsuitable work environment or where pay doesn’t cover living costs

Uncovering latent business beliefs that people were personally responsible for their circumstances, our first step was to use the user research to shape an education workshop. With the intention of shifting cultural attitudes, workshops trialled with Balfour Beatty and MAG helped employees understand the root causes of the issue, as well as the employment potential of people experiencing hidden homelessness. 

Our second step was to design a recruitment tool, as the research revealed that impacted people were likely to perform poorly during interviews. Learning that interview questioning tends to focus on examples from recent work experience, we focused on reshaping systemic processes and practises that will help employers better surface candidate potential, and for people impacted by homelessness, increase the likelihood of securing a job. 

HI Future Co-Creation Insights – In becoming ready-for-work, we realised that impacted people bring considerable strengths from their lived experience of homelessness, and where relevant, previous work experiences. – People with personal insight into homelessness also want to determine whether or not they share their story and who with, but for those who do, finding ways to best share their experiences and journey out of homelessness would help build trust with employers – Another major challenge is keeping track of data shared with charities, public sector organisations and businesses. Digital literacy, access to technology (for more than one hour at a time) and a place to safely save data all play a part.  – For the businesses who have attempted social mobility recruitment previously, targeting is challenging as it requires working with hundreds of independent charities to find the right person for a role.  – Often, businesses use jargon in job advertisements, ask for more information than is necessary for the role –  covering skills, experiences and qualifications – plus offer no clarity on documentation essential to apply for the role (e.g. identification).  – Cut and paste versions of job advertisements are used across in house recruitment websites and across mainstream recruitment websites (e.g. Indeed and Monster) but there is no opportunity to ask questions or access support through the recruitment process. – More informal recruitment processes would help take remove some of the challenges around cultural stigma and systemic barriers, such as focusing on a person’s recent work experience, and allow for trust to start being built – Within each business, recruiting an advocate for homeless employment would be hugely beneficial, to support the advertising, recruitment and onboarding process for both line managers and impacted people.

Building on the cultural shifts enabled through the education workshop and potential for system redesign revealed through creating the recruitment tool, in January 2020, we brought the HI Future community together to co-create the matchmaking platform. Asking the community to help us explore how we might remove barriers during the advertising and the recruitment of roles, we revealed key opportunities for design and development. 

These insights informed the creation of HI Future’s of a personal and business Q&A, which helps uniquely matches roles based on people’s strengths over and above recent skills, determines how feasible salaries or travel distances are based on a person’s current circumstances, and identifies roles where the work environment is best suited to an individual based on their unique needs. 

Mooch Ashley, Lived Experience Consultant “It gave me a lot of confidence to look for job opportunities for myself and to speak to employers about my past. HI Future helped me to value my experience and not try to hide my past. I found employers wanted to hear about my employment gaps. I valued the the relationship I built with employers they helped me understand my potential. It wasn’t about judging me but nurturing the skills that I brought to the table”

With the intention of empowering impacted people to make more informed decisions about suitable roles, the matchmaking platform asks businesses to take more responsibility for asking for what they need during the recruitment process, including basic role needs only, past experience and qualifications where necessary and legal obligations for identifying documentation. 

Other features include storage for CVs and cover letters to help homeless people easily and safely keep their recruitment documentation in one place and FAQs to help both businesses and homeless people access wider support. Our intention is to empower homeless people to apply for roles they may not have previously considered based on their strengths, and enable businesses to remove systemic barriers that prevent people securing roles. 

IMAGE 2: HI FUTURE MATCHMAKING PLATFORM LANDING PAGE

The funding means we now have a minimal viable product in the matchmaking platform plus an education workshop and recruitment tool to test-and-learn ready for launch. Additional funding is now needed for launch and an 18-month pilot, where we aim to place 250 people into employment across four boroughs in Greater Manchester. 

If you’re here looking for an exciting non-executive director role with an ambitious social enterprise, you’re in the right place…

The Enterprise

Our Organisation

At Noisy Cricket, we engineer social change. As social innovators, our mission is to build people-powered movements through realising our vision of bringing diverse voices together to co-create solutions to social issues.  

Working purposefully and collectively on the root causes of social issues, founder Lauren Coulman, non-exec director Harry Bailey and our partner agencies work to create strategic and cross-sector responses to systemic, cultural and personal challenges in our society, all with impacted people at the heart of the solutions designed.

Using our unique humanity-centred design process to develop strategy, we map out issue-led insights, build communities, shape campaigns and design social products and services. Through our holistic approach, Noisy Cricket’s powerful work empowers changemakers and facilitates social change in health inequality, youth poverty and tech ethics. That’s just through our consultancy work too – we’re also on the cusp of launching our first venture in homeless employment.

Our Ambition

In our transition from start-up to scale up, this past year saw us convert to a social enterprise, as well as attract significant funding and sponsorship to fuel our growth. As we look to cement our sustainability and scale our impact, Noisy Cricket needs a curious, courageous and collaborative team to help drive our success.

With ambitions to further strengthen the impact and reach of the cross-sector consultancy – which acts as the engine of organisation – the next stage of growth will involve strengthening our own product base with which to drive and influence change. Developing and financing new ventures is also key, in demonstrating the power of our approach, as well as providing the capital to underpin future ventures and investments.

With a solid base in Greater Manchester, working across the private, public and third sectors, in the next three years, we intend to grow nationally, as our movements grow and take new and exciting forms. Health inequality, youth poverty and tech ethics are our current spheres of influence and addressing social issues such as these – at root cause and with a true sense of community – is essential in coming on board.

As thought-leaders in this space – our founder Lauren Coulman contributes at Forbes.com and writes for issue publications of the likes of Big Issue North – platforming our unique insights into social issues and humanity-centred design is key. As facilitators of change, platforming our changemakers will play a major part in our ambition to grow to a £1m plus turnover enterprise and bring on board design, facilitation and campaign talent in 2021. 

Most important, however, is the innovative culture of social entrepreneurialism we want to instil in the organisation, with each individual and organisation we employ, partner with or influence to think differently and model new approaches. Actively listening, courageously caring and being ambitiously hopeful is how we live and breathe as Noisy Cricket. How about you?

The Role

Your Remit

Your role as Noisy Cricket’s non-exec commercial director is to help us achieve sustainable growth through driving both social and economic value, build strategic partnerships and explore how we utilise our capital to share power with our team, partners, customers and communities. 

You will also be working directly with our founder, Lauren Coulman, and non-exec director, Harry Bailey in driving the strategic direction of the social enterprise, working with the wider team in shaping the culture of our organisation and supporting our consultancy and venture leaders as they look to grow new projects and ventures. 

We are looking for a commercial non-executive director who is open-minded, comfortable challenging cultures and systems and is a team player, with an ability to flex across commercial and financial skill sets, work across sectors and with people at all levels of financial literacy. 

Most importantly, you’ll want to make the world a more equitable, equal and enlightened place, and that’s why we’re particularly interested in hearing from women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ folk and disabled or neurodiverse people. Being diverse and inclusive simply means we inherently live and breathe the kind of change we want to see in the world.

Your Brief

In supporting Noisy Cricket, we’ll be asking you to focus on:

Commercials: Supporting us on developing pricing, commercial modelling and breakeven analysis for our consultancy work and venture projects

Financing: Understanding of the (social) investment, financing and funding landscape, working with us on bids and pitches to fuel our growth

Financial Management: Helping us establish robust financial practices through ensuring rigour in managing our costs, optimising our revenue opportunities and driving profitability for future re-investment in Noisy Cricket’s work

Financial Advice: Advising us (alongside our accountants) on the tax requirements surrounding social enterprises, research and development opportunities and employee and shareholder remuneration

The role will be predominantly advisory-based, with some research, shaping of tools and processes plus coaching required to support Noisy Cricket’s founder, board and teams. 

The Offer

Your Commitment

We’re looking for people who are committed to our purpose, so you’ll initially be brought on board for a three-year term. We expect to move and flex quickly in those three years, so excepting the founding director, anyone who would love to remain involved will be welcomed to reapply for a role on the Noisy Cricket board.

In year 1, you’d be required to spend a minimum of one day a month (usually spread over the month rather than on a given day)  on Noisy Cricket support, projects and director’s meetings, with flexibility around existing work projects and commitments.

Year 2 and 3 we would expect this to scale but will be open to discussion based on need and the balance of you and the rest of the board. Our physical base is in central Manchester, but we’re flexible to travel and very comfortable working remotely, so happy to flex based on whatever works best.

Your Remuneration

As a C.I.C limited by share, demonstrating that social value is valuable is essential. It’s why pro-bono work offers aren’t for us, so for the first three years of your role on the board, we’ll be offering 10% shares to value your time and investment in the organisation.

Excepting the founding director, the shares will be redeemable and without voting rights, and upon leaving your role with Noisy Cricket, will be returned back to the organisation. As directors, we’ll collectively determine whether these are paid in the interim or at the end of each financial year, but what’s important is recognising your contribution. 

The Application

Stage 1: Expressions of Interest

Simply let us know that you’re keen to play a part in Noisy Cricket’s future and why by filling in this expression of interest form here. 

Deadline: Friday 5th February 2021

Stage 2: Initial Chat 

We’ll have an initial conversation to clarify any questions you have about the role, its remit and responsibilities, so we’re all on the same page. 

Deadline: Friday 19th February, 2021

Stage 3: Experience 

You’ll be invited to send across your CV—so we can understand your background—and a case study or proposal which offers insights into how you have or would approach shaping a new venture. 

CV gaps, alternative work experiences or careers changes aren’t an issue here. We only want to get a feel of where you’re coming from. The case study or proposal simply need to demonstrate why you’re a great fit for the role. 

Deadline: Friday 26th February, 2021

Stage 4: Informal Conversation

This will be a simple chat to explore a little bit more about who you are, your values and what motivates you. No preparation is needed. 

Deadline: Friday 12th March 2021

Stage 5: Formal Interview

We’ll be digging a little deeper into your personal and professional experience and strengths. Past skills will be useful here too, but we’re more interested in your abilities and your approach to your work. 

Deadline: Friday 26th March, 2021

 Final offers will be made and confirmed by Friday 2nd April. Good luck!