People Operations Manager

Help build the people function at Suvita from the ground up.

Location: India (preferably Pune or Patna).

Application deadline: 24th September 2023.

Note: This position was formerly designated as the "People Officer" role. If you have previously submitted an application for the People Officer role, kindly refrain from reapplying. The role remains unchanged in terms of responsibilities, but the title has been updated to better align with the job duties.

Are you a creative people person with high agency and empathy?

Are you equally comfortable with numbers and solution oriented?

Are you excited to delve into details and by the opportunity to optimise systems and processes?

This role may be for you :)

About Suvita

Suvita is an impact-driven startup nonprofit focused on increasing the uptake of routine childhood immunisations in India. We run two evidence-based programmes to boost attendance at vaccination appointments:

Sending SMS reminders directly to new parents and caregivers, to help them remember when their child is due for a vaccination.
Identifying natural community influencers and supporting them to act as immunisation ambassadors.

In partnership with the state governments in Bihar and Maharashtra, we have enrolled 600,000 families for SMS reminders. In addition, we have engaged 4,500 volunteer immunisation ambassadors, who we expect will connect with over 150,000 additional families to encourage and support them during their child’s vaccination journey. We estimate that our programmes to date will enable around 13,000 additional children to become fully vaccinated, saving roughly 150-200 lives so far.

This is a great time to work at Suvita as we are embarking on an exciting phase of growth and moving from the start-up to the scale-up phase. Concretely, over the next year, we expect to scale our SMS reminders programme across all of Maharashtra state (10x growth), and additional districts in Bihar state (at least 3x growth). We plan to double the reach of our ambassadors programme and will also be scoping in four additional identified states across the country for future programme expansion. Over the next few years, our ambition is to scale both programmes across Suvita’s six target states which are home to 70% of India’s under-immunised children. We anticipate our plans and ambitions to require a dedicated team member to support and shape the people operations function at Suvita.

About the role

We’re seeking a people operations generalist who will be responsible for delivering and strengthening Suvita’s people operations function, across the lifecycle of team members from recruitment to retention.

You will encounter systems, programs and initiatives that have been in place for a while - so you should be skilled at quickly onboarding and executing them, as well as identifying opportunities for further improvement that have the greatest impact. You will also encounter many novel tasks or problems for which we don’t yet have an established protocol - so you must be comfortable charting a course under uncertainty and bringing in your Bayesian mindset where relevant.

You will report to the Head of Finance, Legal and People Ops. Your responsibilities will include supporting them in the areas below. In practice, this would imply doing the initial groundwork and then discussing the outputs for sign-off.

Support recruiting of new team members
- Explore relevant avenues to network/ post job advertisements.
- Support the development and evaluation of job tests.
- Curate the journey for candidates going through the job application process
- Assist with onboarding new team members.
- Update organisational lessons on hiring.
- Explore setting up experiments at each stage of hiring to make the process more robust and efficient.
Support existing team members:
- Be the team point of contact for day-to-day issues, including office infrastructure and tech support.
- Maintain records of team members.
- Assist with contract renewals.
- Process expense reimbursements.
- Process travel bookings and provide travel support.
- Bi-annually conduct a 1-1 check-in with all staff members.
- Assist with offboarding of team members.
- Organise ad hoc and regular team meetings including team retreats
Support the building and improvement of systems and policies: Assist with building/researching/reviewing/iterating/improving and executing internal tools, systems and policies to help the team perform to their best at Suvita, such as:
- Leave tracking.
- Expense reimbursement.
- Travel policy.
- Performance monitoring and career progression.
- Learning and development.
- System to track team mood and motivation.
- Grievance and anti-harassment policy.
- Goal setting and tracking system.
- Employee handbook.
- Terms of Reference for each team member.

Where this role might go?

The scope of the role will have the possibility to grow alongside Suvita’s scale, e.g. over time you will have the possibility of working with a growing team and managing more tasks and responsibilities. Over time, based on your performance and preferences, and based on organisational needs, there may be a chance to either move into other areas of operations or to grow in responsibility within the people function at Suvita.

Why this role is awesome

You will be working in a mission-driven, impact-focused organisation with strong values and a thriving culture.
You will be working with a friendly, passionate, curious and supportive team.
You will be at the heart of Suvita’s employee experience and ensure that our team members flourish.
This is a new role in a startup environment. You will have exposure to and say over how the people operations function is built and shaped at Suvita. We are aiming for huge growth of our programmes and impact in the coming years, so there are plenty of opportunities for outsized personal impact and growth.

Whom we are looking for

We don’t have any hard requirements for the role in terms of education or experience. The ideal candidate will have many of the following characteristics:

Attitudes:

You share Suvita’s values.
Relationship builder: You are curious and kind, and enjoy deep conversations with a diverse range of people. You are perceptive and are able to build trusting relationships.
Service-oriented team player: You thrive on enabling and empowering others. Delivering this with outstanding quality gives you great joy and satisfaction.
Dependable & conscientious: When you say something will be done, it will be done. You are able to work independently with minimal supervision.
Detail-oriented, highly organised and meticulous planner: You make sure all the minor details are taken care of to have a smooth running system.
High agency: You can find a way to get done what needs to be done, without waiting for conditions to be perfect or otherwise blaming the circumstances
Question the status quo: You don’t take inputs and instructions at face value, but get to the why and challenge assumptions. At the same time, you are humble and self-aware.
Discreet: You know how to handle sensitive information.
Obsess about continuous improvement: You constantly think about measuring and improving the quality of processes.
Flexible, enjoy a high task volume: You can juggle multiple items and know how to prioritise and switch between tasks.
Curious learner: New systems and processes intrigue you and you enjoy understanding their crux.

Skills:

Excellent problem-solving skills.
Excellent planning skills: You often anticipate potential hurdles or bottlenecks that others might miss when planning a task.
Systems mindset: You can step back and look at the big picture. You make adjustments today to accommodate changes coming tomorrow. You put in place processes that can work autonomously. You can spot opportunities to optimise processes.
Quick learner: You are able to get up-to-speed on new tools and systems quickly.
Research: You are excited about researching, testing and implementing organisational tools, systems and best practices.
Data-driven decision maker: You are able to run data-driven experiments / take data-driven decisions, and quickly and effectively seek, absorb and process information for decision-making.
Online tools: You are comfortable with gsuite tools - gsheets, docs, forms.

Knowledge:

Fluent in English and Hindi. Marathi, Gujarati, and Rajasthani are a plus.
Awareness of the Indian cultural and job context.
Interest in organisational behaviour and human psychology is a plus.

Other details

Hours: Full-time.
Duration: Fixed two-year term with plans to make it long-term subject to performance and organisation plans and budgets.
Location: India. Preferably Pune or Patna with the possibility of remote work a few times a week.
Pay: Competitive with other nonprofit salaries, and in line with the experience and responsibilities of the selected candidate.
Benefits include:
- 30 days’ paid holiday leave per year plus 12 days’ sick leave at full pay.
- Health insurance policy.
Travel: Most of our team members are located in Patna and Pune. Depending on your location, you would be required to visit Pune and Patna for a few days every few months.
Reports to: Head of Finance, Legal and People Ops.
Application deadline: 11:59 PM IST, 24 September 2023 (Sunday)
Application timeline: The application process will consist of:
- An initial screening test (linked below).
- 2 written tests.
- A final interview round.

Our best guess is that we will send out the final offer letter within two months from the application close date.

If this all sounds exciting, please apply by following the below link.

Application form