Employee relation manager jobs in Manchester

Senior Service Designer  

 
Location: remote. This role can be based at any of Barnardo's national offices. Regular local and national travel will be required. 
 

Help us design services that transform childhoods  

At Barnardo's, we believe every child deserves a safe, happy and hopeful future. For over 150 years, we've been innovating to improve the lives of children, young people and families across the UK. Today, we run more than 800 services and are committed to making them excellent, inclusive and designed with the children, young people and families who use them. 

As a senior member of the Service Design team, you will play a vital role in applying service design methods to deliver measurable improvements in service quality, efficiency, value and outcomes for children, young people and families. 

We are continuing to strengthen how we design and improve services across Barnardo's, working across a complex and evolving portfolio that spans children's services, digital delivery and business development. 

This role offers the opportunity to shape not only individual services, but how service design is used to support decision-making, prioritisation and innovation across the organisation. 

This is a hands-on role as well as a strategic one – you'll be actively designing, prototyping and iterating services as well as shaping direction and decision-making. 

As a Senior Service Designer, you will: 

• Work across a portfolio of projects, balancing priorities and adapting to changing organisational needs 

• Contribute to service development and proposals, working with business development colleagues to shape service models 

• Influence decision-making and prioritisation, using evidence and insight to guide direction 

• Identify opportunities to improve services in ways that deliver better outcomes, greater efficiency and value for money 

• Lead the end-to-end design of services in complex environments, shaping user-centred, evidence-based solutions that respond to organisational priorities, and creating service maps, blueprints, prototypes and other design artefacts to bring ideas to life 

• Test and iterate service concepts in response to feedback and learning, refining solutions to improve outcomes 

• Ensure services are coherent and integrated across online and offline channels 

• Work across functions including business development, digital, finance, operations, research and policy to engage stakeholders and support organisational change 

• Mentor and support colleagues – developing confidence and skills, with the potential to provide line management support to junior designers where appropriate 

• Develop practice and contribute to standards, frameworks and reusable design patterns 

• Share learning internally and externally, contributing to professional communities of practice and helping raise the profile of service design at Barnardo's 

This is a varied, hands-on and project-focused role that allows for autonomy, creativity and real impact. You'll be part of a warm, committed team that shares learning, supports wellbeing, and is united in a clear mission: designing for better outcomes for children and families. 

You'll work with a high degree of autonomy, navigating complexity and ambiguity, delivering tangible improvements to services and contributing to a growing and evolving design practice. 

What We're Looking For 

We're looking for a Senior Service Designer who can: 

• Work autonomously to lead the design of complex services 

• Manage competing priorities effectively across projects, balancing time, focus and trade-offs 

• Influence stakeholders and support organisational change beyond immediate project teams, communicating design decisions and complex ideas clearly to a range of audiences 

• Understand how services operate within wider organisational systems, and use this to inform decision-making and support effective change 

• Confidently use a range of evidence, including user research, service data and performance insights, to inform decisions and guide direction 

• Conduct in-depth user research to generate actionable insights and guide decision-making 

• Create and iterate prototypes and other design artefacts 

• Integrate offline and online service delivery into coherent end-to-end services 

• Design and facilitate collaborative workshops with a range of stakeholders and partners 

• Evaluate and evidence the impact of service design work

Previous experience in children's services, health, education or related public/third sector contexts is desirable – but if you bring transferable skills, we want to hear from you. 

What You'll Get in Return 

• 26 days annual leave (rising with service) plus bank holidays 

• Access to the Barnardo's pension scheme 

• Flexible working and hybrid/remote options 

• Wellbeing initiatives and Employee Assistance Programme 

• Regular supervision and career development opportunities 

• The opportunity to shape how service design is used across a national organisation 

• The chance to work on services that support children, young people and families across the UK.

Inclusion and Belonging 

We are committed to building a diverse workforce. We particularly welcome applications from disabled candidates, LGBTQ+ people, people from racially minoritised communities, and those with care experience. If there's anything we can do to support you through the application process, please let us know. 

 Ready to Apply?

Together, we can change childhoods and change lives.

When completing your application please refer to your skills knowledge and experience in relation to the Person Specification and Job Description.

Please note due to the high volume of applications for some posts, this advert might close before the displayed closing date.  We recommend that you apply for this role as soon as possible.

An exciting opportunity has come up to oversee the operational management and delivery of our burgeoning volunteer-led music and mental health charity. We are looking for a new Community & Operations Lead who has a track record of working holistically and empathetically in line with best practice to effectively manage and grow our services at an operational level; support the ongoing safe recruitment and retention of volunteers through our volunteer pathway; build and support community engagement; manage our two studio sites; and design, develop and manage exciting projects informed by our community members’ vision in collaboration with the Strategy & Fundraising Lead.

Our new Community & Operations Lead will be a calm and reassuring presence with a track record of facilitating positive working relationships, co-productive and person-centred approaches, and intersectional working in order to support our work addressing local health inequalities and reducing the health, social and financial barriers to creativity and support that local people face.

Seed Studios is a music and mental health charity based at Old Trafford Wellbeing Centre and Broomwood Community Wellbeing Centre working with adults aged 18+. From our centres, we support positive mental health and culture in Trafford through...

• our weekly volunteer-led Community Music Wellbeing Workshops, in which adults learn new instruments and disciplines in sessions proven to improve confidence, skills, connections and mental & emotional wellbeing
• our 1-to-1 music tuition and peer support which compliments support that individuals receive from our Trafford, Manchester and Salford health partners
• our inspiring and community-building events such as Open Mics and our annual Celebrate Seed Studios event
• our innovative partnership programmes, like our monthly workshop series with older adults charity String of Hearts, and our fortnightly In Harmony workshops in partnership with Dementia Disco and Trafford Choices.

In 2025, We enabled over 800 hours of free volunteer-led sessions with an annual footfall of over 2500 as well as 24 hours of free, 1-to-1 music tuition support for referrals from our health partners every month.

Hours 25 Hours Per week across 5 days – to include daily play sessions 4-6pm each day. 

Manchester Young Lives is offering an exciting opportunity to join our team as an Early Intervention Worker, providing high-quality pastoral and therapeutic support for children and young people aged 6–14 years.

Following successful delivery for the last three years, we are delighted to be recruiting to a vacancy within our Early intervention team. The Early Intervention role focuses on providing support specifically for children and young people suffering increased levels of anxiety, loss of confidence and self-esteem, missing school or other types of isolation and trauma.

This role involves working directly with children and young people through face-to-face support, while also integrating into Play and Youth Sessions at our Adventure Playgrounds. You will work closely with families, schools, and other education and support agencies to help create the best possible opportunities and outcomes for the children and young people we support.

Based at our Adventure Playgrounds in Moss Side and Ardwick, the successful candidate will bring enthusiasm and passion for working with children and young people, the ability to use creative and innovative approaches to engage, support, and reassure them alongside a strong commitment to making a positive difference within local communities.

Working hours include after-school sessions and evening work, Monday to Friday, with some weekend work required to respond to local needs. Staff may also be required to work across a number of locations as part of the wider team.