Service Transformation

We want to ensure that everyone with blood cancer, regardless of circumstances, has the support they need to navigate their blood cancer and live well. In this role, you’ll transform how people with blood cancer access and experience our products and support services.

You’ll lead on service transformation projects such as:

• Growing our Direct Referral Service across the UK, where NHS Trusts are referring newly diagnosed patients for an ongoing journey of tailored information and support
• Scaling up our Clinical Trials Support Service, so we can support many more people than we are currently around understanding and accessing clinical trials
• Improving access to clinical trials for ethnic minorities, by testing and piloting new interventions in communities

With a Service Designer to support you, you’ll lead user research, prototyping, testing and iteration of new products and services. You’ll ensure our service transformation programme is working on scalable and sustainable products and services that meet user needs and strategic goals.

This is a relatively new role, so we are looking for someone excited by the opportunity to embed it in the organisation and build strong ways of working. Expected travel for this role is approximately 2-4 visits to the office per month. More frequent travel to the office may be required during busy periods.

We are committed to actively promoting equality, diversity, and inclusivity. In line with our strategy we welcome approaches from individuals from underrepresented groups, including minority communities, and applicants with a disability, to better reflect the community we serve and help broaden our perspectives.

We will interview suitable candidates whilst the role is live and may choose to bring the ad to an early close at our discretion.

We welcome applications from candidates looking to work part time, a minimum of 28 hours per week. Please state this in your cover letter before submitting your application.

Application DeadlineMay 25, 2025DepartmentResearch, Policy & Services Employment TypeFixed Term ContractLocationLondon/HybridWorkplace typeHybridCompensation£60,000 / yearReporting To

Key Responsibilities

MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES

Strategic leadership:

• Act as delivery lead for one of our key strategic priorities - to reach 75% of people with blood cancer with the support they need, by transforming our services and how people access them.
• Ensure service transformation programme is strategically aligned, and is working on scalable and sustainable products and services that meet user needs and strategic goals.  Develop our demand modelling and projections for growth and scale, and lead on the department’s use of data and insight to inform decisions and understand performance
• Act as key champion of User Centred Design principles and support the development of an Innovation & User Centred Design Community of Practice,
• to share best practice and standardise methodologies across the organisation. Conduct horizon scanning to stay informed on best practices around service innovation across sectors (charity, NHS, commercial) and leverage your own sector expertise to drive innovation while ensuring we can operate seamlessly within NHS and other health systems to deliver true change.
• Develop a pipeline of future programmes of work, identifying user needs, problems and opportunities that Blood Cancer UK are best placed to address.

Operational management

• Build and manage a new Service Transformation team in the organisation (yourself and a Service Designer), establish team remit and embed how the team works with the rest of the organisation
• Lead the operational delivery of our service transformation programme, supporting workstream managers and project teams to take a user-centred design approach from ideation through iteration and roll-out of new products.
• Oversee high-level plans and budgets, ensuring workstreams align with each other and with other key workstreams in the organisation for maximum impact
• Identify skills requirements and source capacity/capability support through internal team/external agency as needed
• Ensure learnings are shared across workstreams and with the rest of the organisation
• Oversee monitoring and evaluation, and develop demand models based on data and insight, which can inform operational models Be the project manager and product owner for the Direct Referral Service, leading the research, prototyping, testing and iteration. Work with people affected by blood cancer, health professionals and the systems both operate in, to co-design products and services that meet the needs of our community.
• Drive embedding of new products and services into BAU where they can scale, and optimise current service model accordingly – working with Head of Services.

External representation

• Take opportunities for Blood Cancer UK to act as a thought leader in service innovation, representing our work at external events and across different media platforms.
• Work with fundraising to communicate current and future projects to funders, securing income to fund the development and roll out of our services
• Showcase our service transformation work where possible to influence and improve the wider health system, working with our Policy team, to achieve change for our community. Participate in relevant charity coalitions that are aiming to improve the wider system for our community.

THINGS WE ALL DO

• Promote Blood Cancer UK’s vision, mission and core values
• Support Blood Cancer UK’s commitment to actively promoting equality, diversity and inclusivity
• We’re all fundraisers. This is slightly different for all roles, and your team will have fundraising KPIs and objectives we all work to Attend and assist at Blood Cancer UK events and activities as required (NB this involves evening and weekend work)
• Be an effective ambassador for Blood Cancer UK at any activity you attend
• All staff are expected to adhere to Blood Cancer UK’s policies and procedures
• Do any other reasonable things your manager needs you to do
• We work in partnership with our community by actively involving people affected by blood cancer in the decisions we make about our work – what we do and how we do it

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

• Experience leading user-centred service transformations and service design, ideally within charity or support services.
• Experience of successfully developing new innovative products and services, and scaling and integrating these into BAU
• Experience overseeing and aligning multiple strategic workstreams
• Experience in product ownership – leading the development of a product or service, including responsibility for its performance and improvement
• Experience in leading user research, ideation, prototyping, testing and iteration, and working with other teams like Digital teams to implement
• Experience leading, coaching and upskilling teams to work in new ways ie user-centred design and agile
• Understanding of demand modelling and growth projections
• Confident using data to improve performance and make decisions
• Knowledge on meaningful involvement and co-design, particularly with users that are currently underserved or face additional barriers
• Understanding and experience of securing funding
• Horizon scanning for opportunities for growth or innovation

About Blood Cancer UK

FLEXIBLE WORKING & OUR BENEFITS

We welcome conversations about part time working, job shares, and all forms of flexible working right from application stage. You can get in touch with us at [email protected] if you want to ask us anything about flexible working.

Benefits: We think our benefits are brilliant, and the majority start from day 1. These are just a few of them:

• 30 days annual leave PLUS bank holidays
• Generous pension scheme and Life Assurance
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption leave, as well as study leave and a day off to move house
• Wellbeing is a priority for us, we offer a wide range of individual and team support in our Wellbeing Hub
• Our Academy is our in-house Continued Professional Development (CPD) learning and development programme, including an internal mentoring scheme. We have organisation-wide focus days, which are days set aside for you to focus on your own development, without being interrupted by emails and meetings.
• Cycle to work and season ticket loans
• Opportunity to take sabbaticals

You can find full details about our benefits on our website.

Location: Working agile means we changed from having a culture where people are expected to be in the office from 9am to 5pm to one where we’re much more focused on what they deliver. We've built a positive culture where autonomy, trust, wellbeing and flexibility allow us to recruit and retain the very best people.   We recognise that teams still need to come together regularly to develop relationships and strengthen collaborative working.   Therefore, for the majority of roles, your contractual place of work will be one of our offices. The expectation for how often you will be required to attend the office is outlined in the job profile and will be discussed with you.   Details about our hybrid and agile working approach (including how travel expenses work) can be found on our website.

HOW TO APPLY

We ask you to send us a CV and cover letter. In your cover letter, we'd like to know why you're interested in working with us at Blood Cancer UK. It's also helpful if you tell us why you think you are a great candidate for this role based on the skills, knowledge and expertise section above. Your cover letter doesn't have to be too long, 1-2 pages is ideal. Please don't add photos or graphics to your CV, as we use blind shortlisting at this stage of the process.

Full details about our recruitment processes, including how we use blind shortlisting and what to expect at each stage of the process can be found on our website. Sometimes we close our vacancies early, usually because we have had a lot of great applicants, so we’d always encourage you to apply early rather than wait until the deadline.

WHY WORK AT BLOOD CANCER UK?

We're the 9th best charity in the UK to work for according to Best Companies 2021!

We started because of Susan, we’ll get there because of you.

Blood Cancer UK was started by one family who lost their daughter, Susan, to blood cancer, and that history and sense of family continues to shape who we are today. When you join Blood Cancer UK, you don’t just become an organisational employee – you become part of a collaborative community dedicated to funding research into beating blood cancer that includes some of the most inspiring people you’ll ever meet.

And we’re not that far away from beating blood cancer. We’re confident we can do it within the next generation, and this makes us hugely ambitious and gives us a sense of real urgency. It also means we’re changing quickly as an organisation as we constantly challenge ourselves and strive to become more and more effective. This pace of change means working here isn’t for everyone. But if you’re excited by the chance to work in a fast-paced, agile and supportive environment with the focus and ambition to beat blood cancer this could be the place for you! We focus on results rather than time spent at a desk, so we deliver more for people affected by blood cancer.

Blood Cancer UK offers the chance to work for and with people affected by blood cancer, and the opportunity to advance your career and develop your skillset whilst taking on exciting new challenges and making your mark.

EQUALITY, DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

We are committed to actively promoting equality, diversity, and inclusivity. Read our statement which reflects our strong drive to change in this area.

To this end we would welcome approaches from individuals from underrepresented groups, including minoritised communities, and applicants with a disability, to better reflect the community we serve and help broaden our perspectives.

You can read some examples of how we can support you through the application and interview process here.

Documents

Service transformation lead mat cover jd and person spec (1)

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Service transformation lead job pack

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