​The Trussell Trust is an amazing place to work – but we wish it didn’t have to exist, because we don’t believe that a charity like ours should be needed at all.

Though we hoped that the huge spike in food bank use during the pandemic might fall away once the crisis had passed, the figures tell an increasingly worrying story. The rise in the cost of living led to a need for 2.1m emergency parcels in the 12 months from last April, significantly up on pre-COVID levels. So our work of changingcommunities, changingpolicyand changingmindsabout poverty and destitution has never been more important.

Every day, over 40,000 volunteers, staff, and people with lived experience of poverty work together to deliver foodbanks across the four nations of the UK. These people are the very best of us, and in turn they deserve the very highest quality of support and development. In this role, you’ll shape and lead all aspects of our People and Equity, Diversity & Inclusion strategies, supporting and equipping those who’ve made a shared commitment to help achieve our vision to end the need for food banks in the UK.

Our outgoing Director has achieved a huge amount over her tenure, including the development of our new People Strategy; but we’re constantly striving to be better, and key priorities for her successor include recruitment (with a particular focus on inclusive candidate pathways), workforce planning and talent management. We’ll also look to you to continue our work on pay, and to ensure that we respond intelligently to the people aspects of our continued and rapid growth. And as we manage the multiple impacts of poverty, insecurity and the cost of living crisis over the course of this hard winter and into next year, wellbeing and psychological safety will be hugely important.

You’ll bring an unusually broad professional repertoire, deftly deploying strategic thinking, professional judgement and extensive practical experience as required. With the credibility and vision to lead a stable and knowledgeable team, you’ll also have the powerful communication and influencing skills needed to advance the case for change across both the Trust, the wider foodbank network, and beyond. Expert and confident with EDI, you’ll be able to show how we can support staff and volunteers, including those with lived experience of poverty, and accelerate progress towards our big-picture objectives. It’s a complex, rapidly-changing environment, with an extremely diverse range of challenges, so you’ll need to be able to think and operate at a system level; but the professional satisfaction of facilitiating this work is off the charts.

We actively encourage applications from under-represented groups such as returning parents or carers who are re-entering work after a career break, people who are LGBT+, from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, who have a faith other than Christianity or none, with a disability, impairment, learning difference or long-term condition, with caring responsibilities, from different nations and regions and those with a lived experience of poverty as well as any other under-represented group in our workforce. We are committed to ensuring the safety and protection of our employees from all forms of harm.

Please visit http://www.trusselltrust-dpi.co.uk/ to find out more.

For a confidential, informal conversation, please contact Debs Thomas or Alex MacLeod at trusselltrust-dpi@cadencepartners.co.uk.