Senior Behavioural Scientist

THE JOB AT A GLANCE

RMA is looking for a passionate and experienced Senior Behavioural Scientist to help shape the future of worker-directed loyalty, wellness, injury prevention, and return-to-work programmes.

This role sits within the Group Actuarial function and will work closely with the Executive Actuary: Loyalty and Behavioural Science to design evidence-based interventions that drive meaningful behaviour change. The successful candidate will be responsible for translating behavioural science theory into practical programmes, building RMA's behavioural evidence base, and ensuring that behavioural insights contribute to measurable business and social impact.

This is a unique opportunity to join a Board-supported strategic initiative and help improve outcomes for millions of workers across South Africa's mining and metals sectors.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

Behavioural Programme Design

• Co-design worker-directed loyalty, engagement, wellness, injury prevention, and return-to-work programmes.
• Develop behavioural architectures, engagement frameworks, and intervention designs that encourage positive behaviour change.
• Design and optimise programme mechanics including rewards, recognition, goals, progress tracking, status structures, social norms, and gamification elements.
• Apply behavioural economics, decision science, and behaviour change principles to employee and employer experiences.
• Produce behavioural specifications, journey maps, communication frameworks, and intervention playbooks for implementation teams.
• Ensure behavioural interventions meet ethical, governance, and regulatory standards.

Behavioural Research and Evidence Building

• Conduct behavioural diagnostics and barrier analyses using recognised frameworks such as COM-B and the Behaviour Change Wheel.
• Lead qualitative and quantitative research initiatives, including interviews, surveys, observations, journey studies, and behavioural assessments.
• Translate behavioural science research and global best practice into actionable business recommendations.
• Develop and maintain a behavioural evidence repository to support decision-making.
• Benchmark local and international behavioural science, employee wellness, and loyalty programmes.

Measurement, Experimentation and Insights

• Design and support behavioural experiments, including randomised controlled trials and quasi-experimental studies.
• Develop behavioural hypotheses, success measures, and intervention evaluation frameworks.
• Partner with Actuarial, Data and Analytics teams to assess programme effectiveness and behavioural outcomes.
• Interpret findings and recommend opportunities to scale, refine, or discontinue interventions.
• Identify and mitigate unintended behavioural consequences and measurement risks.

Stakeholder Engagement and Capability Building

• Present behavioural insights and recommendations to leadership, governance forums, and executive stakeholders.
• Collaborate with stakeholders across Product, Digital, Claims, Marketing, Prevention, Rehabilitation, Commercial, and Analytics teams.
• Promote behavioural science capability across the organisation through training, coaching, and toolkits.
• Contribute to thought leadership, industry forums, and external partnerships.
• Support the development of behavioural science capability within the team.

WHAT YOU'LL BRING TO THE TABLE

Qualifications

• Postgraduate qualification in Behavioural Science, Behavioural Economics, Psychology, Cognitive Science, or a related quantitative social science field.
• Master's degree and/or PhD will be advantageous.
• Research experience in motivation, goal setting, behavioural design, gamification, or incentive design will be beneficial.

Experience

• Minimum 5 years' experience applying behavioural science within a commercial environment.
• At least 3 years' experience designing engagement, loyalty, wellness, employee, or customer behaviour programmes.
• Demonstrated success in designing interventions that achieved measurable behaviour change.
• Experience designing and evaluating behavioural experiments in live business environments.
• Experience in financial services, insurance, healthcare, or another regulated industry will be advantageous.

Knowledge and Skills

• Behavioural economics and decision science.
• Behaviour change theories and frameworks, including COM-B and Behaviour Change Wheel.
• Choice architecture, habit formation, motivation design, and gamification.
• Experimental design, causal inference, and behavioural measurement.
• Qualitative and quantitative research methodologies.
• Behavioural segmentation and barrier mapping.
• SQL proficiency and experience working with data.
• Python or R experience will be advantageous.
• Knowledge of loyalty programme design and engagement strategies.
• Understanding of POPIA, consent management, and ethical behavioural design.
• Excellent communication, presentation, stakeholder management, and influencing skills.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability.