Improvement Advisor, Built For Zero Canada

Job Title: Improvement Advisor, Built for Zero Canada

Reports to: Director, Built for Zero Canada

Employee type: Full-time (37.5 hours per week)

Number of Positions Open: 3 FT Permanent, 1 FT Contract (Mat Leave)

The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness

The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness (CAEH) leads a national movement of individuals, organizations and communities working together to end homelessness in Canada. The CAEH works toward a Canada without homelessness. We do it by helping communities and governments across the country apply proven approaches to transform programs, policies, and systems toward the goal of ending homelessness.

Diversity & Inclusion

CAEH strives for inclusivity and diversity by attracting extraordinary people from diverse backgrounds and lived experiences. Candidates with lived experience of homelessness and/or who self-identify as being from a marginalized community, including Indigenous peoples, racialized persons, persons with

disabilities, and 2SLGBTQQIA persons, are encouraged to apply and will be prioritized. We ask that these candidates indicate their relevant identities in their cover letters. We are committed to equitable and fair opportunity in the recruitment, selection, training, compensation, promotion, and benefits of all employees.

Built for Zero Canada

Built for Zero Canada (BFZ-C) is an ambitious national change effort helping a core group of leading communities end chronic and veteran homelessness - a first step on the path to eliminating all homelessness in Canada. Built for Zero is a methodology, a movement, and proof of what is possible. We use a structured, supportive, and data-driven approach that focuses on creating a sense of urgency, optimizing local homelessness response systems, accelerating the adoption of proven practices, and driving continuous improvement. The movement is made up of more than 30 communities that have committed to using a system-wide approach to measurably end homelessness, one population at a time, to reach functional zero and build a future where homelessness is rare overall and brief when it occurs.

The Position

Reporting to the Director of Built for Zero Canada, an Improvement Advisor (IA) is an entrepreneurial, results-oriented leader dedicated to ending homelessness in Canada. The IA is committed to the structured process of BFZ-C with an interest in continuous improvement and innovation. The IA is a skilled coach/facilitator and will be responsible for directly coaching a specific caseload of communities (virtually and in-person) through the BFZ-C milestones using a data-driven approach. The IA may also have a strategic focus area for which they take the lead in supporting communities and/or the BFZ-C team. The IA is also responsible for helping to design and deliver Learning Sessions and Actions Cycles.

Essential Duties And Responsibilities

• Capture learning and best practice from high performing communities as a strategy for scale.
• Design and facilitate Learning Sessions and community on-site meetings as needed.
• Engage staff, community leaders and strategic partners in BFZ-C processes and in providing input in the design of BFZ-C tools and methods.
• Use data to develop, test, implement and spread changes that will support communities in reducing the number of individuals experiencing homelessness month to month, improving the trajectory toward reaching functional zero.
• Assess improvement education and training needs of participating communities; develop appropriate strategies, implement support plans, monitor outcomes and improvements.
• Using Quality Improvement methods and tools, coach and consult with targeted co assistance during national and community-based events (e.g., coaching calls, webinars, learning sessions, presentations).
• Participate in BFZ-C and CAEH strategic planning and implementation, with a commitment to iteration and improvement.
• Produce, support, and participate in BFZ-C webinars/group calls as needed.
• Communities to achieve improvements specific to reducing the number of individuals experiencing chronic and/or veteran homelessness month to month, improving the trajectory toward reaching functional zero.
• Train and support communities to use data to drive performance specific to their local efforts to end homelessness.
• Serve as a confident and commanding facilitator, providing content and technical expertise.

Other Duties

• Serve as backup to the other IA(s) on calls, meetings, and training as needed.
• As a representative CAEH, present on BFZ-C learning, methods and/or outcomes and at conferences, workshops, convenings, etc.
• Other duties and special projects, as assigned, to advance the efforts of BFZ-C and CAEH.

Work Environment, Salary and Travel

• Travel up to 7 days per month to communities and for meetings may be required.
• Up to $500 annual professional development allotment.
• This position can be located anywhere in Canada with preference for a location that is easily accessible to an international airport.
• The salary range for this position is $70,000-$90,000 annually based on experience (subject to the results of the CAEH compensation review), plus a comprehensive benefits package, including a retirement savings plan.
• This position requires the ability to work from a virtual/home office location without the standard support available at a business office.
• We value work-life balance and offer flexibility in scheduling when possible.
• Five weeks paid annual vacation (plus an additional paid winter break week) and up to 12 sick leave days per year.

Qualifications

• Lived experience of homelessness, housing precarity and/or marginality is an asset.
• Bilingual, English and French, both oral and writing skills is an asset.
• Three to five years previous work experience in a professional environment.
• Experience working from a diversity, equity, inclusion, decolonizing, and anti-oppression framework is preferred.
• We’re looking for the sort of person who finds problem solving and complex implementation fun and who prides themselves on seeing multiple paths to the same outcome. You should come to work every day with a desire to collaborate with your teammates as we serve local change agents in communities around the country.
• Receives and relays criticism constructively, comfortable managing conflict and disagreement to a productive conclusion.
• Command of the Model for Improvement/Quality Improvement and insight into how it can be used to drive improvements toward ending homelessness and measure impact.
• Comfort with systems and macro-level thinking.
• Non-traditional candidates are welcome. CAEH strives for representation and authentic inclusion of applicants and employees who have direct, first-hand experience with poverty, homelessness, and their root causes (including racism, marginalization, discrimination, and all forms of inequity).
• Knowledge on housing and homelessness, best practices, local systems design, by name lists and coordinated access preferred.
• Ability to manage projects in a fast-paced, virtual team environment toward aggressive timelines and the ability to embrace change, risk, ambiguity, and uncertainty.
• Experience with facilitation, public speaking, and coaching for improvement.
• Demonstrate a level of expertise related to the duties described normally acquired through post-secondary education in a discipline pertinent to this work or the equivalent school/work/experience combination.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, strong negotiation, mediation and listening skills.
• Passion for ending homelessness, a belief it’s possible, and a sense of urgency to get there.

Defining Success for this Position

• BFZ-C Improvement Advisors act as coaches to support communities to build capacity and skills to move towards achieving functional zero.
• BFZ-C communities report being able to contact and receive timely feedback and relevant support from their primary Improvement Advisor.
• All BFZ-C communities have the improvement framework they need to test and refine new ideas and use data for driving measurable reductions and a functional end to homelessness.

Software Applications Used

• Nation Builder
• Internet browsers and Google Business Apps
• Zoom
• Microsoft 365 including Microsoft Office and Microsoft Teams