Head of Seafood Ethics Action Alliance vacancy
This page has information on:
- Job status:
- This is a temporary post with a fixed-term contract until June 2025.
- Full-time OR part-time (a minimum of three days per week).
- Applications also open to consultants on a part-time basis only.
- Location: Homebased (UK) or office-based in one of our offices in Edinburgh or Grimsby
- Salary: The salary range for this role is £46,000 - £50,000
Seafood Ethics Action Alliance (SEA Alliance)
The SEA Alliance is a pre-competitive collaboration of retailers and seafood businesses. The aim is to strengthen human rights due diligence carried out in the global seafood supply chain and ensure respect for human rights.
As a non-departmental public body Seafish is the SEA Alliance's fiscal sponsor and secretariat. We have been involved in the SEA Alliance’s development since 2018.
As of August 2023, there is 34 member companies, including the 11 largest UK supermarkets and leading seafood businesses and brands, alongside retail and industry trade bodies. The SEA Alliance membership account for over 90% of UK grocery retail sales, and its members have global operations and supply chains.
Visit the SEA Alliance website for information:
Seafish
Seafish is here to give the UK seafood sector the support it needs to thrive. Our work makes a huge difference. We work with people from seafood businesses and trade bodies to government, regulators, and environmental organisations. Our work includes research, campaigns, insight, advice and training.
At Seafish, we operate a Trust and Performance working environment focusing on performance - both what you do and how you go about achieving it. We don’t measure time in our Trust and Performance culture, instead we measure delivery. Working in this way means you have autonomy and accountability in equal parts and working in a way that is most effective for you, as long as your work is delivered to agreed standards.
You’ll have a personal development plan which clearly outlines the objectives and competencies for your role and your learning and development goals. You’ll also have regular catch ups with your line manager, along with mid-year and end of year reviews to formally discuss your performance, competences and professional growth.
Visit the ‘Working with us’ page on our website to learn more about our culture.
The SEA Alliance was established by seafood businesses in 2018 to deliver best practice solutions to human rights issues affecting the UK seafood sector. This includes international and domestic supply chains, linked to wild capture fisheries. In April 2021, the SEA Alliance was awarded $250,000 in funding by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation over two years (with further extension in 2023) to support our work to increase industry leadership and encourage positive change in human rights issues across the seafood supply chains of UK companies. The successful candidate will lead the SEA Alliance to deliver its progressive human rights agenda.
The successful candidate will work for the SEA Alliance but will be appointed and employed by Seafish.
Job purpose
- Be the central role in the SEA Alliance’s work to advance social responsibility and protect human and labour rights within UK seafood supply chains.
- Have primary operational leadership of all the workstreams under the direction of the SEA Alliance work plan. The candidate will lead on the research, development, and execution of social responsibility work areas.
- Take overall responsibility for ensuring the SEA Alliance work plan is fully implemented. This is either by delivering the high-quality materials required under the different workstreams, managing external contractors, or by working closely with participant companies in a facilitation role to deliver the action-orientated outcomes.
Dimensions of the role
- A combination of project delivery, commissioning and managing external contractors and facilitating work by participating companies to deliver the work plan.
- Working closely with the Seafish SEA Alliance secretariat, the SEA Alliance Chair Steering Group, Working Group Leads and the SEA Alliance participant businesses. There will also be the requirement to engage with external stakeholders including (but not limited to) the Global Tuna Alliance, the Sustainable Seafood Coalition, the Food Network for Ethical Trade, International Transport Workers Federation (ITF)and Non-Governmental Organisations.
- Managing a budget of around £300,000 over the next two years and the reporting requirements associated.
- Working closely with the Seafish SEA Alliance secretariat to promote participation in activities, raise awareness of outputs, and keep SEA Alliance members and non-members updated on important developments.
Core responsibilities
Within Seafish:
- Working closely with our Head of Industry Workforce Issues on project delivery and performance criteria to ensure all work remains aligned with the SEA Alliance work plan.
- Applying sound financial project management procedures including written monthly reports and end of project reports.
- Working closely with our SEA Alliance secretariat, to ensure work outputs are aligned with other activities implemented on behalf of UK seafood stakeholders.
- Co-ordinating successful work programme delivery and plan and prioritise own workload to deliver required work outputs.
- Managing external contractors with minimal support to ensure successful and timely project completion, including finance payments, in-line with our policies and procedures.
Within the SEA Alliance:
- Reporting monthly on project and budget activities to SEA Alliance Steering Committee and Working Group leads.
- Maintaining structured reporting framework and producing narrative and financial reports as required by the funders and comply with the contract commissioning requirements for sub-grant work.
- Representing SEA Alliance at relevant UK stakeholder events, to keep academic peers, NGOs, fishery managers and government / regulator representatives updated on developments.
- Co-ordinating input and guidance from SEA Alliance and relevant recognised external experts, to ensure work programmes remain closely aligned with industry’s needs and expectations, and to help identify potential ongoing opportunities for further support / collaboration.
- Establishing SEA Alliance as an impactful, sustainable and transparent pre-competitive collaboration, with members aligned on human rights standards and Human Rights Due Dilligence processes.
- Supporting businesses to undertake aligned and effective Human Rights Due Dilligence through training, the provision of tools, and opportunities for peer-to-peer support on key challenges.
- Carrying out advocacy and engagement with Governments and other relevant bodies to better protect the human rights of workers in the seafood industry.
- Support SEA Alliance “Change on the Water Fund” improvement projects.
Person attributes
- Planning and prioritising own workload based on required project-specific and annual outputs, ensuring alignment to the successful delivery of the overall SEA Alliance work plan.
- Ability to working directly with a large group of stakeholder interests, each with their own needs and potential agendas.
- Devising strategies to communicate effectively with all stakeholders to ensure the successful delivery of the SEA Alliance work plan.
- Organising Working Group meetings in liaison with the respective Leads.
- Working with SEA Alliance participants to ensure their engagement and ownership of the agenda.
- Using project management recording systems in-line with Seafish policies, procedures, and guidelines.
- Exercising professional judgement and decision making to plan and manage all SEA Alliance work plan responsibilities, with minimum supervision.
- Ensuring SEA Alliance and Seafish are always represented in a highly professional manner.
- Ability to procure external services and supplies up to £30k (incl VAT), with sign-off from Seafish line manager.
- Ability to manage time and workload autonomously to ensure that the stakeholder engagement and project management requirements are fully met.
Essential working relationships
Seafish:
- Seafish SEA Alliance Secretariat, Head of Industry Workforce Issues and Director of Operations
- Other Heads of Teams and key Seafish colleagues
External:
- SEA Alliance Chair, Steering Committee, Working Group Leads, and wider SEA Alliance participants.
- Seafood industry stakeholders, government, academia and NGOs.
To be a suitable candidate for this role you should have:
- A sound understanding of the global social responsibility landscape.
- Familiarity with social responsibility issues, and human rights due diligence policy development and implementation.
- Experience in achieving social change and improving corporate social responsibility.
- Substantial experience in identifying and addressing human rights risks in global supply chains.
- A degree (preferably in a relevant discipline).
- Expertise in socially responsible seafood, and knowledge of ‘sea to plate’ seafood supply chains is desirable but not essential.
- Excellent organisational and project management skills, and proven ability to prioritise and deliver discrete tasks across multiple different workstreams against tight deadlines, within budget and with minimal supervision.
- Excellent communication skills and be experienced at distilling complex information to produce user-friendly and non-technical resources.
- Experience of building and managing influential multi-stakeholder networks and associated relationships.
- Intermediate-level ‘IT skills’ and strong working knowledge of relevant Microsoft Office packages including Teams, Outlook, Word and Excel.
- A willingness to work collaboratively and effectively as part of a multi-disciplinary team.
Special features
- This job will involve some travel around the UK.
- Driving licence preferred, but not essential.
Every role is Seafish is linked to our bespoke competency framework. The competency levels for this role are:
- Growing Expertise – Creates a learning and development environment
- Embracing Change – Leads and supports others through change
- Building Relationships – Builds links with others to develop and deliver best solutions
- Achieving Results – Leads team to achieve results
- Influencing with Impact – Communicates Complex Messages
All roles within Seafish are graded and have defined salary bands.
This role is a grade 6 post, and the salary range for this role is £46,000 - £50,000. A new member’s appointment on the pay spine is dependent on the experience they bring to the role when they start. New candidates normally start at the lower end of the range unless they can demonstrate considerable experience in the requirements of the role.
Additional benefits include:
- 25 days annual leave plus Bank Holidays and Christmas office closure. Optional 5 days per year paid volunteering leave for an activity of your choice.
- Trust and Performance working environment – you get your work done to the expected standard in a way that suits you.
- A generous employer pension scheme – Seafish will double your contribution, up to a maximum employer contribution of 10%.
- A range of health and wellbeing benefits including the Cycle to Work scheme, Tech Scheme, private medical insurance, gym discounts and free eye tests.
- Our unlimited employee assistance scheme is a support service available 24/7 – it offers confidential, impartial advice on anything you need such as work, family, finance support or anything else personal to you.
- We have a professional development culture with plenty of learning opportunities.
- We have a high performing culture and reward those that do well each year.
To apply for the post, you should email your application to recruitment@seafish.co.uk. Please include ‘Head of SEA Alliance' in the subject line of your email.
Please state in your application if you wish to be considered for the full-time or part-time option or both.
Your application should include:
- A covering letter or a short video explaining why you are a suitable candidate.
- A recent copy of your CV so we can find out more about your skills and experience.
- A completed copy of our recruitment consent form.
The deadline for applications is Sunday 8th October 2023.
As part of the recruitment process the SEA Alliance steering group will have an input into the recruitment of the role. Successful applications will be invited to interview and will be given at least one weeks’ notice of proposed interview date to allow you to prepare. At this stage you might be asked to complete a short task in advance of interview and then answer some competency-based questions during interview.
Further information
For any queries about the job description or the salary and benefits on offer, please email recruitment@seafish.co.uk.
Thank you for your interest in Seafood Ethics Action Alliance and Seafish - we look forward to hearing from you!