Quality, Improvement and Innovation Executive

Position Quality, Improvement and Innovation Executive

Location Flexible working - home based with with regular travel across Jobs Guarantee delivery areas to meet colleagues, employers and partners (South & West Scotland)

Salary £25,664 + excellent benefits

Hours 35 hours per week (flexible working)

Status Fixed Term to October 2028

Closing date 11 October 2026

Please note: We are recruiting in anticipation of a decision on our Jobs Guarantee bid due to the short mobilisation period. Any appointment and confirmed start date will therefore be subject to successful contract award and mobilisation requirements.

Jobs Guarantee needs more than strong headline performance.

We need to understand the quality and impact behind the numbers.

We need to know whether participants are receiving the right support, whether our Relational Mentoring approach is being delivered consistently, whether employment opportunities are right for people and what we need to learn and change as delivery develops.

We are looking for a Quality Improvement & Innovation colleague who will work alongside operational teams to create consistently strong delivery while continually improving how Jobs Guarantee works.

This isn't a compliance role sitting at the edge of delivery and checking what happened afterwards.

You'll be part of delivery.

You'll spend time understanding participant journeys, talking to colleagues, reviewing practice, analysing information and identifying what is working well and where something could be better.

You'll help turn quality assurance into quality improvement.

A core part of the role will also be helping us turn delivery into learning, learning into evidence and evidence into opportunity.

You'll bring together performance data, participant experience, frontline intelligence, employer feedback and insight from place.

You'll help us understand not simply what happened, but what changed because of our work and what that tells us about what we should do next.

What you'll do

1. Build quality into everyday delivery

Work alongside Operations Managers, Team Leads, Mentors, Employment Pathways and wider colleagues to make quality part of normal practice.

Help colleagues understand what good looks like.

Develop clear and proportionate quality-assurance approaches that provide confidence without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.

Use case reviews, observations, data, feedback and conversations to understand quality.

Identify issues early and work with operational colleagues to improve them.

Create an environment where teams’ own quality rather than experience it as something done to them.

2. Strengthen Relational Mentoring practice

Help bring our Relational Mentoring approach to life consistently across Jobs Guarantee.

Look beyond whether an interaction happened and understand the quality and purpose of the relationship.

Help colleagues reflect on whether:

we understand the whole person;

support is genuinely personalised;

the relationship is purposeful and creating progress;

colleagues are supporting and appropriately challenging;

participants retain agency over their journey;

the right wider support is being brought around them.

Create opportunities for reflective practice and shared learning.

Identify strong practice and help make it repeatable.

3. Understand participant experience

Keep participant voice at the centre of improvement.

Create meaningful ways for young people to tell us about their experience before, during and after employment.

Go beyond satisfaction.

Understand what helped, what got in the way and what participants believe could have been different.

Use individual experiences to identify wider patterns.

Make sure participant feedback results in action.

4. Connect data, stories and place

Work with performance information alongside qualitative insight.

Understand where participant journeys are slowing and why.

Look for patterns across engagement, matching, job starts, sustainment, progression, employer experience and quality.

Analyse information by locality as well as across the whole programme.

Ask what participant experience and performance are telling us about the place, not just the contract.

Bring together robust data and human evidence so we can tell a credible story of impact.

Help teams move beyond asking, “Did we hit the number?” towards understanding, “What is the number telling us and what do we do next?”

5. Drive continuous improvement

Identify opportunities to improve processes, practice and participant experience.

Use structured improvement approaches where useful, while keeping them practical.

Test changes, understand their impact and help teams embed what works.

Follow improvement actions through rather than simply making recommendations.

Where the same issue repeatedly appears, look for the underlying cause.

Help simplify processes that create unnecessary complexity for participants, colleagues, employers or partners.

6. Support innovation

Create space for colleagues to test ideas and new approaches.

Bring together frontline experience, participant voice, employer feedback, data and wider learning.

Explore where different approaches, technology or partnership working could improve outcomes or efficiency.

Don't innovate for innovation's sake.

Focus on solving real problems or creating better outcomes.

7. Support quality, evidence and assurance

Work with Administration, Finance and operational colleagues to ensure case records, performance evidence and processes meet programme requirements.

Identify areas where poor process or recording could create operational, financial or audit risk.

Support audit and assurance activity.

Make sure learning from assurance is translated into changed practice.

Work particularly closely with Administration and Finance where recurring evidence or reconciliation issues suggest a wider process problem.

8. Create enterprise learning

Make sure learning doesn't stop at Jobs Guarantee.

Share useful approaches, evidence and learning with colleagues across the Wise Group.

Bring wider organisational learning into Jobs Guarantee.

Help turn strong practice into organisational capability rather than knowledge held by individual people.

Use evidence of impact to strengthen relationships, influence how services are designed and contribute to future opportunity.

What you'll bring

You'll bring:

Experience within quality improvement, service improvement, continuous improvement or a related discipline.

A strong understanding of what good person-centred delivery looks like.

Confidence working alongside operational teams.

Strong analytical skills.

The ability to combine quantitative data with lived experience and frontline insight.

Curiosity and strong problem-solving skills.

Confidence asking difficult but constructive questions.

Strong communication, facilitation and influencing skills.

The ability to turn learning into practical action.

An understanding of evidence, assurance and audit requirements.

The ability to turn learning into evidence and evidence into improvement.

An interest in innovation and finding better ways to work.

A mindset that looks beyond one programme and considers what the wider enterprise can learn.

A collaborative and pragmatic approach.

View the Role Profile for full details about this opportunity.

This role forms part of a bigger opportunity, click here to find out more about Jobs Guarantee and see all open roles.