Senior Research Specialist, Organisation Health

NCSS, a statutory board under the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF), is a membership body for more than 500 Social Service Agencies (SSAs). These SSAs provide social assistance and support a range of service user groups, including children, youth, elderly, families, people with disabilities, and people requiring mental health assistance. NCSS’s mandate is to support SSAs in strengthening their organisational capabilities so that they are effective in delivering quality, innovative and sustainable solutions to address social needs.

The job holder will working in the Evaluation Team within the Translational Social Research Division, focusing on research related to SSAs’ organisation health. The individual will work extensively with various teams in NCSS that develop and implement schemes and initiatives to drive capability-building of SSAs and the sector, in areas such as digitalisation, manpower and volunteer management.

The individual will advise and provide support in the area of data analysis, visualisation, as well as data collection/research methods, to enable data-driven decisions in planning for sector development.

Analyse and Generate Insights on the Organisational Health of SSAs

1. Conduct in-depth analysis on the organisational health of SSAs to articulate the impact of organisational capability-building efforts on service outcomes for service users, and inform capability-building strategies for the sector.

This entails

a. Maintaining, updating and enhancing dashboard on organisational health of the sector, incorporating relevant data sets

b. Advising on updates to organisational health frameworks, survey and self-assessment methodology of self assessment tools

c. Sense-making and identifying the relationship between service user outcomes, capability building efforts and organisational health data

Analyse and Generate Insights on Manpower in the social service sector

2. Work with NCSS teams to analyse workforce trends to guide decision-making and strategic planning, and develop relevant metrics and dashboards to monitor performance; including

a. Identifying and assessing key sectoral manpower challenges and needs, uncover insights on attraction and retention of segments of the sector workforce, including Social Service Professionals in management roles

b. Developing meaningful sector level indicators, working with demographics, compensation and other data types

c. Monitoring and reporting key statistics

d. Collaborating with internal and external stakeholders for analysis and reporting needs

e. Leveraging market benchmarking data to influence and optimise decision making.

Strengthen In-house Research and Evaluation expertise

3. Support NCSS research and evaluation projects on sector and SSA needs, by

a. Providing feedback on surveys administered by teams and provide support in analysing the findings

b. Advising on the design and implementation of research studies

c. Advising on the impact evaluation of capability-building schemes to assess impact, identify learnings and inform forward plans.

Personal Competencies:

- Strong communicator
- Open-minded, creative
- Driven, independent and proactive worker
- Analytical and exhibits critical thinking
- Team player
- Able to work well with multiple stakeholders
- Flexible and adaptable, comfortable operating in a dynamic, fast-paced environment

Skills & Knowledge:

- Good statistical Analysis
- Business Needs Analysis
- Power BI
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Problem-solving skills
- Strong research skills (quantitative and qualitative) and experience with research projects
- Knowledge and/or experience in Organisation Development
- Demonstrable experience in strategic planning and implementation.

**Experience**:
At least 5 years’ work experience, preferably with experience in Social Services or organisation health domain.

Special Certification(s)

Data Analytics Qualifications e.g. SPSS, Python, Coding, R programming